Feral
by midori Haru
Summary: When youkai undergo the age of maturity, some of them succumb to instinct, becoming what is called Feral. But it is not the only time one can become Feral. A youkai can be driven Feral too
1. Apprehension

Welcome to my latest fanfiction that as just a little bit farther from cannon and just as different from all the rest as they are from each other. I wrote this story in about 14 days. Yeah I know I said I wanted to focus on original work, but this idea hit me and it was fairly therapeutic to write it. There is no happy ending (as if, happily ever after sucks). I guess I really enjoyed writing the darker parts of Chronicles and White Alchemist Taya's wish for an "angst" piece might have spawned this.

It is dark. I'm warning you now. There is abuse in many forms. You don't have to actually read it first hand though. Most of this is observing it from the outside after the worst of it has happened.

Sesshoumaru does not appear in the first few chapters, but trust me...He will. Think how Chronicles started. Sesshoumaru didn't appear for several chapters, but he was one of the main plot movers.

Lastly, I'd like to put a few notes about terms.

Feral in this fic is applied to youkai who have, for lack of a better analogy, gone crazy. In humans, many mental ailments are not identifiable before puberty. I've stretched this to cover youkai as well. but again, humans can go batty after puberty too. and so it is in this fic.

I'm going to have to cut this short. I don't have internet in my apartment, so My time on-line is limited. I should have a fairly regular update schedule, but again my time is limited, so bear with me.

Oh and only the characters you don't recognise from the anime are mine. There's a handful of them like always, but this is a short piece.

Enjoy!

**Apprehension**

The sky was one of those amazing unblemished blues that seemed to stretch into forever. Such days of perfect blue were rare and enchanting, or perhaps it was rare that people took the time to notice the color of the sky, the feel of the sun warming the air and the sweet taste of every breath. Truly, it was a magnificently fair day. A perfect day for homecomings.

Kagome reveled in the wind fingering through her long dark hair even as her mood refused to match the loveliness of the day. She rode shotgun beside her best friend of many years, Sango on their way to the station. The only thing that could possibly brighten her mood and alleviate her anger was if the right people were in the car with them. Not that there was anything wrong with Sango… "I still can't believe every single one of the Taishous were too busy to pick up Akemi." She grumbled to the woman skillfully driving the magnificent car Kagome's tantrum had bought them.

"I'm sure they had their reasons," Sango muttered absently.

"What reasons?" Kagome demanded over the roaring wind streaming over and around the baby blue convertible. "The Taishous are Akemi's guardians. She hasn't been home in nine years. They betrothed her to Sesshoumaru when she was six and sent her away when she was ten." Something that still bothered Kagome. "They're the only family she's got and they haven't visited her or let anyone else visit her since she left."

"I know," Sango replied as she carefully maneuvered through traffic.

"They didn't even check on her when I begged them to four years ago," Kagome sighed. Actually she'd been really worried about Akemi for the last four years. It was a feeling in her gut she just couldn't shake. And she couldn't ignore it, she was genetically geared towards premonitions and sensing bad vibes. Even half-trained she knew better than to disregard something that felt this bad, especially when back by evidence.

But the great Inu no Taishou had dismissed it. Informing her it was normal for youkai females to be sent away to school for several years; offering the school's reputation for comfort and it's policy forbidding visitors for reason. He'd said the same thing every time Kagome brought it up again; four Christmases ago, every summer vacation, and every spring break. The old dog had finally forbidden her from asking again.

"Kagome, you have to understand," Sango tried to reason with her friend. "Akemi had to be sent away to protect her from Sesshoumaru until she was old enough to mate-"

"What!" Kagome screeched. "Are you trying to tell me Sesshoumaru is going to attack her?"

Sango winced, "No, Kagome. I'm telling you that Sesshoumaru is older than Akemi – "

"Of course he's older than Akemi," Kagome snorted.

"Kagome, listen to me," Sango ground her teeth. Sometimes Kagome was impossible to reason with. "Sesshoumaru was reaching his age of maturity. You know how weird he got around that time. His hormones were kicking in. Instinct comes incredibly close to the surface during that time. Many youkai go Feral. They become insecure and possessive. Like humans in puberty, in pain or undergoing change, they seek to have as much control over what's around them as possible."

"Especially Sesshoumaru," Kagome muttered.

"Exactly," Sango nodded as she exited the expressway. "Akemi _is_ his betrothed which, in his state, would have translated to property. Best-case scenario, he would have just marked her before she was ready and very likely without her consent. He would have tried to control her. You know what Akemi was like. It would have been a very bad situation."

Yeah Kagome knew Akemi, she'd known her longer than Sango even. "Okay fine, Akemi needed to be sent away, but for nine years? Come on Sango, that's stretching it. Sesshoumaru's been fine for years. And why to a school that won't allow visitors?"

Sango didn't have an answer for the number of years Akemi had been kept away. "All the Taishous are male. Females are usually sent to all girl schools, barring males is normal. Besides, Sesshoumaru would have had a fit if any male he knew got to see her when he didn't."

"I didn't say male visitors," Kagome snorted. "I said visitors, as in any."

Sango blinked, "What?"

"I asked to visit her four years ago, then that Christmas and several times after that. The Inu no Taishou said it wasn't allowed."

"Well, I'm sure he wouldn't send Akemi to-" Sango tried unsuccessfully to reassure her friend.

"Don't even start," Kagome scoffed. "My mom gave me that one until I stopped accepting it two years ago. My gut won't accept it, never accepted it. I don't think it'll start now."

"Wait a minute, your gut?"

"I've had a really bad feeling every time I think about Akemi for the last four years."

Sango had seen how Kagome's "bad feelings" usually turned out. The first bad feeling Kagome had ever had was just before the car accident that had killed Sango's parents and Kagome's father. They had disregarded her terror, her begging for them not to go. Sango would never disregard one of Kagome's feelings and couldn't fathom how anyone else could. "Four years?"

"Just before I stopped receiving letters from her," Kagome nodded.

"Did you tell-"

"A half trained miko, such as I, probably misinterpreted it," Kagome scowled at the passing cars. "She didn't die, hasn't died yet, so what could I possibly be worried about?"

"But you are," Sango commented softly.

"I've lived with this stabbing in my gut for four years. What do you think?"

"That the Taishous are great fools!"

"I only told Inu Taishou," Kagome shrugged. "He's the only one who knows where she's at. Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha couldn't have done anything about it. She didn't die," Kagome scoffed. "There are worse things than death."

Sango swallowed painfully. Indeed there were worse things than death. Things a female alone and far from home were extremely vulnerable to. "God I hope you're wrong!"

"I hope so too," Kagome glanced down to the passing lines on the road. "But four years is a long time to be wrong."

Sango sighed solemnly. She was right. Kagome's feelings, no matter how short-lived, had always proven true.

"Which is why I'm so pissed non of the Taishous could take time out of their lives to come with us to pick her up," Kagome growled. "Something tells me the moment is critical and everybody ignores me."

"How do you mean critical?" Sango asked curiously. This was something new. Kagome's feelings had never been so specific.

"I don't know," Kagome shrugged. "I just know that they should be here. Even if I didn't have a feeling about it they should be here. She's been gone a long time. If I'd been gone a week my mother would have dragged the whole family out to see me off and to welcome me home again."

"Sesshoumaru couldn't come," Sango answered.

"So?" Kagome snorted. "Inuyasha and his father certainly could."

"No they couldn't," Sango sighed. "If Sesshoumaru couldn't' meet her no male of his acquaintance could. The situation is full of pitfalls. Any male to meet Akemi before Sesshoumaru gets to her is playing with fire because she's of age now."

"But Inuyasha is engaged to me," Kagome protested.

"And Miroku is marrying me in two months," Sango shrugged. "It doesn't matter. They're both male. In Sesshoumaru's view, Akemi is better than both of us because she is betrothed to him. If she's better than us any male can see that, therefore every male on the planet is untrustworthy."

"Absolutely ridiculous," Kagome scoffed.

"It's instinct Kagome," Sango tried to reason with her.

"It's stupid insecurity is what it is," Kagome growled. "I don't know why he even cares. He never even wrote to Akemi."

"I thought Sesshoumaru didn't know where she was," Sango blinked.

"His father did," Kagome leaned against her side of the car with a sigh. "How did you think I wrote to Akemi?"

"I guess I didn't think about it."

"I did."

Sango shook her head as she pulled into the first available parking space outside of the train station.

"Why do youkai travel in trains again?" Kagome asked without much interest.

"Sort of a universal nervous allergy to planes," Sango shrugged. "We're a little early."

"And they think we're the weak ones," Kagome snorted.

"You're in a really bad mood about this," Sango chided the miko. "Akemi may not have her family here to greet her, but at least she's got us. If you don't lose the dark clouds, she may wish she didn't have to meet anybody."

Kagome sighed, "I know, and I do want to see her, it's just…"

"Your bad feeling," Sango sighed.

"It doesn't just go away if nobody pays attention to it."

"Well, I'm not ignoring it," Sango declared firmly. "We just have to wait until Akemi's train arrives before we can properly assess the situation and figure out what to do next." She thought for a minute. "I say we treat her to lunch at the little café over there and catch up. Since nobody else could come with us, I don't see why we can't take our time getting her home. If nobody feels a particular urge to see her right away…"

Kagome grinned, "I think we should take her shopping and then dinner afterwards."

"That's the spirit!" Sango smiled.

"Teach them to ignore what I say' Kagome lifted her chin and marched purposely off to determine just which café in the station would appropriately fit the bill. She was determined to find a half way decent one with outrageous prices on everything. The Inu no Taishou had given her free reign over his credit card and she intended to punish him financially for the last four years of worry and disrespect towards her abilities. Stupid youkai!

Sango shook her head with a smile. Hopefully, whatever had befallen their long absent friend wouldn't make her against lunch, dinner and a buying spree because Kagome now had a mission.


	2. Darkness

Whew, I have a little more time now.

I would like to say I'm flattered to have received a review the first day this fic was posted. It is a great deal more pleasing than the long wait I had with Chronicles. Thanks for taking the time to read!

The world in which I have placed this story is sort of a combination of Rumiko Takahashi's and our own. There are youkai. Their history is full of violence between youkai, human holy figures, the sub-category of youkai that is Feral, and Wild youkai. But at the start of this story, their history has resolved into a sort of peace of understanding and tolerance that is full of complex restrictions and customs.

No one declares one way right and another wrong. Tolerance is key.

But again, dark corners exist and it is into that which Akemi (whom you will now be meeting) was lost.

If Kagome or Sango seem a little out of character later in this fic, let me remind you that they are both exceedingly pissed off. And Kagome pissed off is a force to be reckoned with even in the anime. She's a little older in this fic, better trained and therefore more effective at being a threat, but she is in essence still given to treating everyone with tolerance, to ignoring the surface to judge only what is inside. And Sango is a warrior from start to finish. Her life has been difficult, but she survived.

But that is for later, for now there is this chapter.

**Darkness**

The rhythmic sounds of the train bumping along down the tracks had lulled Akemi into a languorous, almost trance-like state. If she were the same person she had been the last time she'd ridden this very train, she'd be asleep, but the years had killed off that reckless trust she'd had for people. Now she would never allow herself to sleep where anyone could see her. As if she even could, Akemi snorted mentally.

She did nothing to draw attention to herself, even watching the other passengers as warily as she did. To them Akemi was just another youkai soothed into somnolence by the steady vibrations of the engine pulling them along. It was a ruse she wouldn't diminish with restless movements or shifting eye.

Akemi had learned stillness through necessity, had adopted efficiency out of enforced limitations. She kept her movements minimal and contained, far too used to pain as a constant companion.

It was a far cry from what she'd been as a child, so full of movement and light, unknowing of just what the world had decided her place was to be. All because of her gender at birth.

She was female. Worse than that, she was a youkai female and expected to be no better than property.

Akemi wasn't supposed to think, she was to perform. She wasn't to act; she was to follow orders. She wasn't to want, she was to provide. And she was to care, not feel, not have emotion beyond the desire to care for a mate, a master, an owner.

She'd balked at such strictures. She'd fought them and complained and cried and paid for it all. For a long time. Alone.

The male she'd known as her betrothed, didn't want that, Akemi insisted. Sesshoumaru, as she'd remembered, had never seemed to have an issue with how she was. He used to smile at her, talk with her, keep her out of trouble. Occasionally, he'd even gotten in trouble with her.

She didn't want to change if he liked her the way she was.

But time changed all things. It had changed her and she was certain it had changed him.

Akemi couldn't continue to say Sesshoumaru liked or disliked anything anymore, when she no longer knew him. It might have been different if there had been any contact from him since she was sent away, but there wasn't and her confidence was gone.

Still she fought against the efforts to make her a thing instead of a person. Akemi had struggled to keep to who she was even as the pieces had been stripped away from her.

Now she was property, but she was damaged property. Her hands shook with the nerve damage her schooling had caused. Akemi hated to write anything anymore. Her penmanship was only the least of the casualties in the battle to render her less than she had been.

The things she'd been through were unspeakable and humiliating. Shame had been pounded into her by every means possible until she was convinced there had never been a time without it.

But they hadn't won, not completely. Akemi was still there, barely. Terrified and beaten into some semblance of submission, but there with one last flare of defiance left in her.

Akemi was dangerous now. She knew it, could sense it in every breath she took. It was unhealthy to be as wary as she had become; a trapped animal feeling the pressure of eyes as a terrible threat to be avoided or fought back against. Her nerves expected attack from every quarter, keeping her on edge and on alert all the time. She was dangerous, teetering on the edge and barely holding on.

And so, Akemi had planned accordingly. When the train stopped she would get off as expected. Then she would catch the most convenient train out of the station and never look back.

In essence, she was going to run, just as she had attempted many times before her tormentors had made it impossible. They'd beaten her and bludgeoned her with "training" until she hardly responded to the things they did all the while harboring this last plan of escape.

Once she was out of their hands she was free to follow her honor. The Sesshoumaru who was waiting to receive her, whether he wanted the old Akemi or the obedient piece of property they told her he did, could receive neither. The old Akemi was dead and the piece of property permanently damaged beyond repair. Her memories of him deserved better than what she was now, and she could never be more again.

She would fix that. Fix it so that Sesshoumaru wouldn't have to settle for less than he deserves. Fix it so that she wouldn't have the guilt of keeping him from finding someone truly worthy of the position, whichever version of female he preferred. And Akemi would slip off into the gray wilderness and stay there. Safe from the eyes that push against her, away from the strangers who couldn't be trusted. Away from the betrayal and torment, abuse and shame. Somewhere she could simply _be_ and no one would care.

The only hitch in her plans would be if any of the Taishous actually came to greet her. Sesshoumaru would not like her leaving, he was youkai and he was inu. Papa Taishou would not like her leaving, he was inu and he was her guardian. Inuyasha would not like her leaving, he was hanyou, inu, but most of all he was part human. He wouldn't properly understand how dangerous she was. All of them were capable of stopping her at least momentarily, interfering with her escape to the only safety she could envision.

Just the thought nearly choked her up with panic.

It was unlikely; Akemi reasoned with herself, that any of the Taishous would be present at the station. She wasn't important enough to warrant the time away from their regular pursuits. She was only a female after all. A female unworthy of even the smallest consideration.

Funny how, after she'd fought so hard against the diminishing value of her worth, she now took comfort in how little worth she actually now understood herself to have.

The train pulled into the station.

Akemi slowly opened her eyes and gathered her things. She did not hurry. Experience had taught her that haste drew attention, and attention was something she did not want. She checked to make certain her hat was firmly lodged on her head and that all her hair was covered. She'd even stuffed it to make it look like she hid more than was there.

With regal bearing that had been painful to learn she disembarked from the train that had brought her homeward and glanced around for the nearest ticket booth to furnish her ticket to freedom. There was no one waiting for her in the terminus so she had no fear of being found out. Rather, she did, but she talked her way around it.

Akemi found her booth and made her purchase, drawing money from the account her parents had left her. It was to be the last time so she stuck her bankcard in with the letter she had painstakingly written three days ago. Where she was going, she wouldn't need money. Or her luggage, which she didn't bother with.

All her childhood mementos had been stripped from her on her thirteenth birthday. She was too old to hold onto childish things, they'd told her. Such immaturity was unbecoming in a mate, a female. There was nothing worth holding onto, no reminders of youth, security and happiness. They could donate her luggage to a compost heap for all the attachment she held for any of it.

Akemi tucked her ticket carefully under her hat, the better to maintain the element of surprise. Someone had come to collect her, she knew. There was no question of it in her mind, even if it was just a servant or a driver, a youkai in the Taishou's employ or a human of high consequence.

Akemi didn't expect it to be anyone she knew, certainly not anyone she cared to see. Surprise was her reward when her outstretched senses brushed against a power she recognized. Despite identifying it as a friendly aura, she folded her power in on itself. She didn't desire to be touched by anything, even if she knew Kagome was trustworthy.

"Akemi!" Kagome shouted and ran towards her, arms outstretched. Joy was etched in her expression, glowing through every pore.

Akemi caught both of Kagome's hands and shook them to prevent the hug she knew was coming. She couldn't' handle a hug. She could barely handle holding Kagome's hands.

"Kagome," Akemi breathed softly. All her louder tones had been beaten out of her. Her greater joys too. Only a slow smile remained for Kagome, and Akemi gave it everything she had. "It is good to see you!" She wrung the little miko's hands gently. She really was happy to see Kagome, at least as happy as she could be.

"Akemi," Sango called from behind Kagome.

Akemi nodded to the other girl but made sure to keep her hands engaged with Kagome's. Kagome's touch she could accept. Kagome had kept in touch, had worried. Kagome had supported. Sango was little better than a stranger.

"We're going to treat you to lunch with the Inu no Taishou's money!" Kagome declared as she began to drag Akemi toward the table the two human women had claimed as their own. "I've already ordered everything on the menu in triplicate so eat as much as you want."

Akemi glanced at the other girl she remembered always tried to rein in Kagome's excesses, surprised when Sango said nothing. "Why would you order so much?" she asked then almost cringed, expecting a blow for her audacity. The right to question a situation was above her.

Neither girl seemed to notice.

"Kagome is punishing the Inu no Taishou," Sango answered as if a human miko had the authority to do such a thing.

"They should be here for you!" Kagome growled.

"So because they're not," Sango added. "We have free use of the family credit card and the classic baby blue convertible."

Akemi was unfamiliar with the car, but was most relieved to hear there were no Taishous going to drop in on them while she waited the few moments before her train.

"We decided we're going to take you shopping after we eat and then dinner before we go home," Kagome sniffed.

"Wouldn't the Taishous begin to wonder at us taking so long?" Akemi asked. Again she expected a blow, her gut curled and twisted at the rules she'd broken: improper language and presuming to understand the mind of a male – her better. She mentally snorted as her expression failed to change; her tone remained soft and pleasant.

"Then they should have cared enough to come," Kagome declared without remorse. "I told them to come, but did they listen?"

"Kagome," Sango shook her head with a smile. "There's no need to go over this again. All the Taishous are fools for not listening to you. I'm sure we all agree," the woman glanced at Akemi and gave her a wink.

The boarding announcement for another train echoed through the station, the tinny sound bouncing off every concrete and stone surface in a slightly discernable squawking sound.

"So any stores in particular you want to check out after we eat?" Kagome asked Akemi. "We have a lot of money to spend if we're to properly punish the Taishou."

"None," Akemi replied succinctly. She couldn't handle the crowds in a store. Too many people too close together, as if the train station wasn't bad enough.

"None?" Kagome gaped in disbelief. "Are you sure you're a girl?"

"Kagome stop teasing," Sango tapped the back of the other girl's head. "She probably hasn't set foot in a shop since she's been gone."

Not quite true, but wholly irrelevant as Akemi was mere moments from escaping them. But they didn't know that yet.

"Okay fine," Kagome huffed. "I won't tease. That just means we'll have to spend an extra large amount of money is all."

Akemi's half-lidded gaze studied Kagome carefully. The young miko was probably the only person she would actively try to remember. It was whispered in dark corners and private gatherings that memory was the first things a youkai who went feral lost.

Sango and Kagome argued back and forth over which stores to take her to, outlining their spending plans for the rest of the day and Akemi just watched them. Human females were so real, so alive, so lucky. They were allowed their emotion, their thoughts, their personalities. They were even praised for it. Akemi was glad to know that at least one species of female on this planet was encouraged to be everything she wasn't allowed. She was too far-gone for envy or jealousy. She could never be the way they were. Some days, Akemi couldn't remember if she ever had been.

The second call for boarding sounded through the cacophony of bustling humans and youkai.

"What do you think, Akemi?" Kagome asked, seemingly out of the blue.

"I think it best decided between you two," Akemi replied promptly, internally quivering at the presumption of thinking for herself. Oh, she had always done it, she'd just learned it was better not to admit it.

"Then it's settled," Kagome gave a firm nod. "We'll start at Tiffany's." Sango groaned.

"You have fun then," Akemi nodded as the final call for boarding came.

"What?" Kagome gasped in surprise. Her expression was comically mirrored by her friend.

"I will not be going with you," Akemi answered as softly as ever. She rose to her feet and dug out the envelope that held her missive to Inu no Taishou and her bankcard. "Would you be so kind as to deliver that to the great Inu whenever you do decide to return the convertible?"

"Akemi where are you going?" Kagome was on her feet and chasing after Akemi in seconds.

Again Akemi carefully caught both of Kagome's hands before the miko could trap her in a desperate hug that would snap the bowstring drawn taut inside her. "I am leaving," she answered softly. "I am not going to stay."

"No!" Somehow Kagome managed to grab hold of Akemi to prevent her escape.

"Kagome let go," Akemi demanded, every muscle tensed in restraint. She tried to break the miko's hold gently, but her control was slipping fast. "Let go!" the growl that entered her voice was threatening as she threw off the woman's hold fiercely.

Sango caught Kagome as she fell back and stared at what she saw in Akemi.

"Akemi what's wrong?" Kagome begged. "Tell me!"

Akemi stared at Kagome a long moment, her gaze filled with horror and sorrow, before she turned and fled.


	3. Revelation

What to put here...

Ah, I guess I could tell you how old all the characters are at this point. I mean it's quite obvious they're not the same age as the anime.

Kagome and Inuyasha are seventeen, nine months apart actually, because I like to be really specific. Inuyasha is the elder though it's hard to tell sometimes. Sango is eighteen and Kohaku, not that he's in this fic, is thirteen. Akemi is nineteen, if you know how to add you already know this. This of course puts Sesshoumaru at twenty-three. (It's math darlings, math!)

Inu no Taishou's age is ridiculously unnecessary to know. Just know he wasn't particularly young when Sesshoumaru was born.

I think you'll really enjoy this chapter. Kagome gets pissed off, and you know how fun she can be when she's volatilely pissed. And Sango's not trying to talk her out of it. Sango's pissed off too. And all this anger is directed at the one handily responsible for it. The TAishou.

Oh and we get to see what Akemi wrote in her little note in this chapter. It just adds fuel to Kagome's fire though.

Tee-hee!

Next chapter we get a closer look at this school the Taishou sent Akemi to. But for now we get the slightest inkling of just what has been done to Sesshoumaru's betrothed.

OH and everybody you recognize from the anime is not mine.

enjoy!

**Revelation**

"Sango," Kagome growled. "Give me the Phone."

"Kagome, don't you think – "

"Now!" Kagome's eyes flashed fire at her friend. "I'm going to get to the bottom of this and _he_ has to come along for the ride!"

Sango gulped. Kagome was pissed and the Inu no Taishou was about to be introduced to her full wrath. Quickly she dug out the special youkai phone she kept on her always.

The Phones were expensive and difficult to come by. Sango only had one because of a hereditary family predilection to work as exterminators. Her people were called in to eliminate Ferals that moved into inhabited territory. The non-feral youkai were usually the ones to call her in. Popular superstition had it that the blood of a Feral could contaminate any youkai exposed to it. It wasn't true of course, but it kept her in business, so she didn't complain.

Kagome snatched it out of Sango's hand the moment she produced it from her purse. Without pausing to apologize to her friend she furiously dialed Inu no Taishou, adding a bit of her own power to strengthen the compulsion to answer.

It often took several minutes to establish a sufficient connection. The second Inu Taishou appeared in the window produced by the phone Kagome launched right into what she had to say. "Taishou, you demented son of a shaved cocker spaniel, get your ass down here, now!"

Holy shit! Sango stared at the miko glaring death at the ancient inu youkai. She'd never heard Kagome talk like that to anyone. She hadn't even known Kagome knew the correct way to insult a high inu.

Apparently neither had the Taishou as he sat stunned on the other side of the communication window. "Kagome what's the matter? Where's Akemi?" he began in alarm, but Kagome cut him off.

"Gone," she declared, flint and steel in her voice. "And from what I could see Akemi's been gone for years. Get moving Taishou. I said now and I meant it!"

"I'd start moving before she gets mad enough to make you, Taishou," Sango suggested dryly. "She's pissed. And so am I."

"Look girls, I can't just drop everything because Kagome wants to throw a tan-"

"Akemi's gone, Taishou! Don't you get it?" Kagome yelled at the inu turd. "The longer you sit there the longer she has to get away and the longer it'll take for me to figure out how to fix what you let happen to her!"

"Akemi's going Feral, Taishou," Sango cut him off before he could say something else stupid.

"What?" he demanded in disbelief.

"There was blood in her eyes," Sango continued. She was a slayer; it was common sense to know the signs of her prey. "She sat with us, unthreatened, for fifteen minutes, trying to hide in the open. She barely tolerated Kagome's touch and made sure to keep several feet away from me."

"Her youki was on alert as if expecting an attack at every moment," Kagome growled. "I want to know what's been done to her and I want to know now! Get moving Taishou, because if I count to ten and you're not here, I will permanently remove any chance of you ever siring anymore sons!" And with that she severed the connection. "Hmmph! I might just do it anyway!"

"It's not like he doesn't deserve it," Sango lead the way out to the car for her gear. She never left home without it. Exterminating Feral youkai required immediate response, not that she was planning to exterminate Akemi. Rather, if she was going to hunt up the fools responsible for Akemi's current state, she was damn well going to be prepared to properly kick their youkai ass.

"Where is that lowlife, bald, mini-chihua-" a clawed hand cut off Kagome's impatient stream of words.

"Watch it little girl," the Inu no Taishou growled in her ear. "Just because you're betrothed to my youngest does not mean you can ins-"

Kagome's eyes flashed fire and her power flared brilliantly to singe every hair up his arm. "Don't annoy me Taishou, I'm not in the mood," Kagome growled when he hastily removed his smoking hand. "Now," she leveled a firm glare at the flabbergasted youkai who seemed to finally see her for the first time. "After Sango gears up we are going back into the station and you are going to buy us all tickets to this school you sent Akemi to."

"Why are you wasting time going back there when even I know that's not where Akemi would go? We should be tracking her down to –" Taishou obviously wasn't a very fast learner.

"Track her how?" Sango snorted. "Kagome taught Akemi how to hide her scent when she was nine."

"What? Why would you do something so –"

"She's really quite good at it," Kagome added. "So we're going to proceed with my plan. Move Taishou! I want to know what pushed Akemi to this point and all the answers lie in that school!" she sneered the word.

"But –"

"Move it Taishou! I'm not playing games with you!" Kagome prodded the male with a miko charged finger.

"Should I bring Kirara?" Sango wondered.

"Might as well," Kagome shrugged. "We may want to return faster than we left. Besides, I really don't like leaving her in the trunk all day even if she can get out on her own."

Sango nodded and retrieved her firecat to perch on her shoulder. "You may proceed Taishou," she offered her own stern prod to get the youkai moving.

In fifteen minutes, they were all ensconced in a luxury cabin headed toward the North Country that had apparently been Akemi's prison for the better part of ten years. Sango slowly stroked Kirara's warm, glossy fur in attempt to soothe her own straining nerves. She was a woman of action. Sitting on a train in wait went against everything her better sense told her the situation warranted, but at least she was able to sit still. Kagome was pacing.

Prowling more like. The miko's power flared irregularly with each spike of worry and anger at this situation. All the other youkai in the car could surely feel it through the walls of their tiny cabin.

"Kagome sit down," the Taishou suggested reasonably and Kagome leveled a glare on him powerful enough to level a house.

"Don't fry him yet, Kagome," Sango advised the miko mildly. "We may need him further today."

"Oh I'm not going to fry him," Kagome smirked evilly. "At least not until he's informed Sesshoumaru as to just what the school he sent Akemi to has turned her into, and what it has cost him. And that some of the damage could have been prevented."

"What are you babbling about? I have yet to see any evidence of irreparable harm done to Akemi beyond the words of two hysterical, angry human women!"

"I believe the Taishou wants some proof, Kagome," Sango spoke blandly, concealing her rage at the insult bestowed upon herself and her friend.

"Do you think we should give him the note Akemi left for him," Kagome wondered just as blandly.

"I don't see why not," Sango shrugged. "We certainly have the time while we wait."

"You're quite right," Kagome nodded as she fished out Akemi's message and flung it at the fool youkai who dare to still question her integrity, her ability, and her reason.

"I thought you hadn't even seen her," the Taishou growled to himself.

"Because Sango could see the blood in her eyes from miles away," Kagome scoffed.

Inu no Taishou ignored her comment in favor of opening the letter from, what he was sure was a perfectly lucid, Akemi. What he found was most distressing.

"Well," Kagome prompted. "What does it say?"

"I can't read this," he growled to conceal his confusion. One of the songs of praise sung about the school he had sent Akemi to was about its writing program. Akemi had always been an imaginative storyteller and her penmanship had been magnificent for such a young age – or so he'd been lead to believe. What was going on? Had Akemi's early tutors praised her overmuch? He shook his head, even if they had; Akemi had been gone to this school for nine years. Surely more progress should have been made even if she'd started learning from scratch.

Kagome plucked the letter from his bewildered hands. "Ah," she nodded as if she'd expected something like it, as if she knew to expect as much. "Now I know why she stopped writing me."

"What do you mean?" Sango asked curious despite of her anxiety. Kagome turned the paper so Sango could see the shaky letters scrawled across the page. It looked like one of the letters her brother Kohaku sent her on his better days of physical therapy. "Still not getting it."

"Would you like a direct comparison?" Kagome offered and scooped up her purse from the cushioned bench she'd never quite settled on. "I've still got the last letter she sent me. Akemi had beautiful penmanship."

"You've carried it around with you for four year?" Sango asked in admiration.

"It was all I had of her to hold on to," Kagome shot a glare at the youkai observing them from his seat. The letter Kagome produced was decently long and the smooth clear letters neatly scrolling across each page reminded Sango strongly of the Akemi she remembered as a little girl. That quiet creature that had been seated across the table from them was so far from her past experiences with the inu female, she'd hardly recognized her. Just as it was with the handwriting on the two letters before her.

"Now I see," Sango nodded sadly, fully understanding what it meant. "Care to take a look, Taishou?" She held hers up next to Kagome's.

He wanted to dispute the common source of the letters, didn't want to admit what they meant. Kagome wasn't about to let him and neither was the scent on both the letters.

"Now what do you think could cause such a detrimental effect on a person's handwriting, Sango?" Kagome asked her friend pointedly. She didn't need to know the answer. This act was purely for the benefit of the idiot youkai before them.

"Severe nerve damage, either in the dominant arm or hand," Sango answered without compunction.

"What could cause such damage in a youkai of Akemi's youth, strength, and healing ability?" Kagome continued.

"Repeated breaks or fractures in the same area of tissue that occurred too close together in time for the damage to fully repair itself between breaks."

"And what does that tell you Akemi has suffered through?"

"Severe physical abuse," Sango's eyes were hard as granite and Kagome's were harder as they glared at the Inu no Taishou.

"How long has this been going on?" Kagome demanded.

"For such deterioration of fine motor skills?" Sango asked rhetorically. "Several years."

"Several years, Taishou," Kagome growled and Sango thought it was her turn to help illustrate the situation properly to the dense youkai staring back at them.

"Kagome, when was the first time you fore-warned about the coming of Danger?" she asked, not needing the answer.

"Before my father and your parents were killed when I was eight," Kagome growled.

"Have you ever been wrong?"

One word. "No."

"Have you ever before warned of danger that wasn't fatal?" Sango's throat closed.

"Kohaku was merely paralyzed," Kagome spat at the youkai who dared ignore her warnings. "Paralyzed along half his body."

The Taishou blanched as he finally grasped where this was going.

"When did you first warn the Incompetent Inu no Taishou of danger for Akemi?"

"Four years ago." Kagome growled.

Taishou gulped as he realized just what kind of fool he'd been.

After several minutes putting the youkai in the hot seat Kirara bumped Sango's chin with her head and drew attention back to the letter to Taishou in her hand. "Would you like to know what it says?" Sango asked the silent inu across from her.

"You can read it?"

"It's not much worse than the letters I get from Kohaku." She had begged the elders to listen to Kagome the night he got hurt. They had only scoffed at her and come back, grimfaced, with her nearly dead brother on a makeshift stretcher behind them. "Why are all elders such fools?" she sighed.

"Age does not bring wisdom," Kagome snorted. "Only experience and arrogance."

Sango shook her head and tapped the letter in front of her. "She has called off the engagement." Whatever color the Taishou had regained he lost again. "She writes that Sesshoumaru deserves better and the guilt would be too much for her if she stood in the way of him finding that." Sango nearly growled at what that sentiment conveyed to her. The people at this strange school had utterly destroyed Akemi's self-esteem and confidence. "She leaves you her name which she will no longer need and her bankcard as payment for the expense raising her caused once in your care, with the exception of that school."

"What does she mean she leaves her name?" Kagome demanded.

"Each youkai clan has its own customs and the like," Sango explained. "For the Taishous the leader leaves his name behind when he assumes the roll of alpha. As a female, Akemi's name would be left to the pack upon leaving it either to mate outside the clan or death."

"What?" Kagome hissed.

"I believe Akemi meant to signify a spiritual death rather than a physical one," Sango studied the paper in her hands. "She asks that you refuse to pay more than half of the tuition demanded for her schooling as she hopes you are too honorable to want to pay her abusers and…" Sango trailed off as she leaned closer trying to make out what came next. "I can't make it out," she sighed in frustration. "She fully understands if you pay them anyway."

Kagome growled, "I'm not liking what I hear, Taishou."

"I'm not liking what I read, and I'm only getting the gist of things," Sango growled herself. "The language is so convoluted and turned it's almost as if she's afraid to ask for anything."

Kagome ran her hand through her hair in agitation. "She is, and it runs deeper than just on paper."

"What?"

"Every time she asked a question her expression may not have changed but her youki did. It retracted from us. Violently, as if she expected us to beat her," Kagome sighed in anguish.

"I do not think we are going to like anything we find at Akemi's so-called school," Sango observed darkly as she stroked Kirara's ears.

Kagome gave an abrupt, mirthless laugh. "AS if there was any question about that."

"Then why do we waste time going there?" the Taishou sighed, wearied by what he'd been forced to acknowledge. There was something wrong with Akemi and it just might be his fault.

"We have to know what's to be gotten over before we can help Akemi get over it," Kagome snorted.

"If we can help Akemi get over it at all," Sango added sadly. For it was entirely possible it was already too late.


	4. House of Horror

Well, and we're back.

hmm, what should I put here...

oh, Inu no Taishou isn't necessarily cruel or stupid exactly. He just doesn't understand people very well. Have you ever met someone who, while seeming very capable, just simply has no intuition or understanding of the "human element" (youkai element, whatever)? The Taishou is one of those. He can identify happiness in others, or sadness, but when it comes to figuring out what makes them feel one way or another, what makes Akemi's personality so pleasing or Kagome so kind or Sango so strong, he has absolutely no idea the complexites of a personality. Many people don't to some extent. The psyche is an infinite thing that is individually effected by experiences in a singular way depending upon natural temperment and prior happenings. Basically, no two people will react to the same thing in exactly the same way.

Inu Taishou believes that Sesshoumaru would force Akemi to submit. And he believes that Sesshoumaru would be in the right of it if he did so. He doesn't try to prevent it, rather he tries to prevent Akemi's resentment over it from being settled on Sesshoumaru. HE is wrong...on all counts. Sesshoumaru would never force Akemi to do anything and Akemi would never submit to force with anything so simple as resentment. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We already know that the TAishou is a rather terrible judge of character as evinced by his foolish disregard for Kagome's warnings, her powers of intuition, and his inexperience with her anger. Anyone who has ever met Kagome has to know she has a temper, usually kept within bounds, but there all the same. So far we have only seen him accurately judge Sango - a warrior he believes he understands. But even there he mistakenly believed Sango susceptible to Kagome's "hysteria" because they are both female and good friends.

Foolish Taishou.

If only his foolishness ended there...unfortunately, Inu no Taishou's sometimes willfull misunderstanding of individual characters and personality has been allowed to affect those he should most desire to protect in ways he can never properly account for.

Some people should just never raise children.

And as always kudos to Rumiko Takahashi for letting me borrow her characters and mutilate her plot. My characters need someone to play off.

Enjoy this long chapter!

After writing the above I feel I should start putting in warnings, so here it is: This chapter starts the darkest material. Herein is contained: discussions of abuse in all its forms (I do mean all!). If you have issues with reading about the darker realities of life, read no farther, but you're missing some of the vital parts of life. (this is not to say Abuse is required in life, it is merely to say that refusing to acknowledge it is leaving a huge blind spot and vulnerability. Not particularly wise.)

**House of Horror**

Their first glimpse of Akemi's former school did not bring to mind torture chambers or hell's gates or any other places of torment. The countryside was breathtaking with lush forestry and far-off mountains. The woods weren't dark and twisted or lacking in animal habitation. The school building itself wasn't made out of forbidding stone or concrete. The walls weren't stained with blood and they didn't hear screams of pain as they approached the front door.

"It doesn't appear sinister," Sango observed doubtfully. Surely a house of torment would look the part with grotesque statuary and howling beasts in pain.

"Of course not," Kagome snorted. "Even Inu no Taishou wouldn't be stupid enough to send Akemi somewhere obviously bad for her."

"I don't know," Sango shrugged. "I would've thought the Taishou would've known better than to send Akemi to an obedience school in the first place."

Kagome leveled a glare at the youkai in question. "Good point," the miko growled.

Inu no Taishou fought not to react to her tone. He had never known Kagome's true anger before and thus, had never been exposed to the full strength of the miko incensed. She was actually scarier than Sango could be when properly riled. His future looked terribly bleak if their combined anger lasted as long as it looked.

The exact nature of the school, as far as the Taishou was aware of it, had come up on the train and both women had demonstrated exactly what they thought of Akemi being sent to such a school.

He'd known Akemi's personality wasn't meant for simple obedience. She was too bright, too confident in herself. It had been delightful to watch her as a child and he'd never wanted her to change. But he knew his son.

Sesshoumaru had always been a bit domineering and possessive. He was controlling and intolerant of what he perceived as foolishness. Inu no Taishou had feared for Akemi mating such a male. He'd tried to talk his son into lenience and tolerance, tried to advise him against needless violence and action. It had never worked. The boy had been too sure of himself, too aware of every attempt at manipulation. Sesshoumaru was like the mountain before the wind. It would take too long to form him into something else.

So the Taishou had suggested the engagement be broken. Sesshoumaru was, he hoped, still too young to have formed a romantic attachment to the female or even just a raw instinctual, physical awareness of her. The boy had been barely fourteen at the time.

Sesshoumaru refused to hear of dissolving the betrothal. The Taishou argued vehemently for Akemi's release. The boy fought fiercely against it. Words were exchanged. In the end, Sesshoumaru finished it with growled words to strike fear in the heart of Inu no Taishou. Fear for Akemi, for the happiness of his son in his future mating.

Sesshoumaru had said he would "force her into submission". Such a process could only engender feelings of hurt, anger and distrust between mates. So the Taishou had thought to at least prevent that by sending Akemi somewhere else to learn submission.

That was the reason he had chosen an obedience school instead of a finishing school. But they were only supposed to teach her to submit, they weren't supposed to brutalize her to the point of turning Feral.

He hadn't told the humans that though. Better they blame him than Sesshoumaru. Inu no Taishou was the one to make the decision after all.

"Are we just going to stand here all day?" Sango prodded the inu seemingly content to make an intense study of the knocking mechanism.

"Right," he muttered as he lifted the great ring and let it fall heavily against the rich mahogany.

The girls had decided to refrain from obviously working against him within the confines of the school. So long as he backed them up on everything of course. Kagome's threat to remove his soft parts stood in perpetuity should he fail to behave, though it was unneeded. It was plenty clear to the Taishou that he had quite horribly underestimated the female of his youngest and she was rightfully insulted by it. Miko were strange intuitive creatures. The fastest way to get to the bottom of this bowl of fishhooks was to let her lead.

"Inu no Taishou," the headmaster surprisingly answered the door. "What a great honor and surprise." The greater surprise being that the headmaster was a male.

"I thought males weren't allowed in the all female youkai schools," Kagome pondered aloud.

"They're not," Sango growled low in her throat.

"Are you here to praise us for the progress we've made with the female you sent us?" the headmaster seemed to take no heed of the women. "She was a particularly stubborn creature, but we finally broke her of it."

"What you did was drive her Feral, you rotten bastard," Sango snorted.

"I notice you've brought us two more females," the male kept ignoring the girls. "Unfortunately we do not accept human breeders at our school –"

Kagome decked him with a miko charged fist. "Oops, didn't see you there," she shrugged, while purposely failing to apologize.

"Kagome," Sango scolded her friend mildly, amusement dancing in her eyes.

"What?" the miko began defensively. "He called me a breeder. Besides, it's not like he even noticed," Kagome flicked some imaginary dirt off her shoulder. "Taishou, I'd like to see Akemi's room now."

The headmaster was just managing to regain his feet.

Taishou glanced at him and shrugged, an indulgent grin plastered across his face. "You heard the lady."

"As you know, Inu no Taishou, visitors are not Allow – "

This time it was Sango who hit the youkai, "I'm sorry, it slipped," she apologized with a shrug to the doubled-over headmaster.

"Surely you can make allowances after you brutalized the female I entrusted to your care to the point of permanent damage and severe mental instability," Taishou reasoned mildly. The threat left out of his tone and posture. The girls were doing just fine on their own after all.

"I don't know what the inu or these two breeders have told you but –" This time Kagome elbowed the headmaster in the back of the head while Sango attempted to kick his legs out from under him.

"I have not had the pleasure of speaking with Akemi beyond the letter she left me, breaking off her engagement, and her intention to never return," Taishou growled, finally allowing his displeasure to show.

"I apologize that we have done such a poor job," the headmaster looked angry for the first time. "When you catch her, if you'll return her to us we will correct our mistake without further charge."

"Taishou," Kagome called to the inu before he could get violent. "We're still at the front door."

"So we are," the Inu no Taishou growled and shoved the headmaster back from the door to provide the girls room to enter the building.

"Inu no Taishou, I must insist that you and your human breeders leave at once," the headmaster asserted firmly. "Many of our girls are at a delicate stage in the learning process and –"

"Great!" Kagome cut him off. "Maybe we'll be able to save a few of them from further abuse! Now where is Akemi's room, you over-inflated excuse of a puffer fish reject!"

"Taishou," the headmaster leveled a warning look on the inu youkai. "You will control the behavior of your human breeder before her mouth contaminates the whole of our student body."

"Let's get one thing straight," Taishou growled darkly at the fool still obstructing their search for answers. "The miko is not _my_ human breeder and you'd do well to stop calling her that."

The word miko seemed to whisper throughout the halls of the building, searching out every corner and crevice where ears could hear it.

The headmaster scoffed, "The miko are just proof of human foolishness in allowing their female too much independence and power."

He had about five seconds to give them that smugly condescending look before Kagome enveloped him completely in her power. Encasing him in air that was painful to breath and torture to move against gave Kagome a warm and tingly feeling, even as he fell to the floor in agony. "Idiot," Kagome huffed as she kicked invisible dust at the fallen youkai.

"Shall we advance?" Sango suggested.

"We don't know where we're going," the Taishou pointed out.

"Then I guess we'll just have to go through every room until we find what we're looking for," Kagome shrugged and started off in a likely direction. Her power fell in behind her, dragging the struggling headmaster across the floor like so much baggage.

The first door they came across opened onto a long hallway lined with doors close together on either side. "Looks like a dormitory to me," Sango declared absently. Something about the place set her on edge. Kirara padded carefully along beside Sango, silently observing everything in her feline way. The corridor was narrow and the air was stale. All the doors were shut tight with no sense of movement behind them. There was no laughter, no shuffling of footsteps not their own. Very odd for a girls' dorm.

The headmaster lashed out at the little feline thing that stalked too close. Kirara jumped and raced up Sango's clothing to stand hissing down at him on the exterminator's should pad. Sango reached up to stroke the little fire cat soothingly.

"Where should we start?" Kagome asked.

The exterminator went to the first door on the left, making sure to grind her heal in the headmaster's solar plexus on her way. "This one's as good as any," Sango shrugged as she knocked on the door before swinging it open. She drew up short in the doorway upon perceiving a very frightened young female cowering by the window on the far wall. "Oh, I'm sorry," she tired to smile even as the girl seemed to shrink even more from every word spoken. "We're looking for Akemi's room. Do you know where it is?" By the time Sango had uttered the last word the poor thing was shaking so violently it was impossible to tell if any of her jerky motions was meant to convey anything but abject terror.

Sango had never been the cause of such fear in one so young, so without reason to feel it. Not even the Ferals she hunted looked on her with such terrible certainty that she would hurt them in ways unimaginable and without reason, even as paranoid as they tended to be. But this was a helpless innocent creature, something to be protected, not abused. It turned her stomach to see it and fired her anger to imagine what caused it.

"Kagome," Sango called to her miko friend. The miko had a way of soothing wounded animals, much as she hated making the comparison, and probably the only person who could calm the youkai in front of them. This female was barely more than a child. She couldn't imagine there ever being a reason to put such fear in the eyes of someone so young.

"I'm coming," Kagome went to move closer to the female, but the minute her power dragged the headmaster into view, the youkai began to hyperventilate. "Taishou, what the hell do I do?" the miko cried out to the only youkai currently coherent and trustworthy enough to supply the information she needed. She hadn't known youkai could hyperventilate. Unfortunately the first step Inu no Taishou took into the room knocked the girl out.

The Taishou looked horrified. He'd never even heard of a youkai losing consciousness as a result of terror. It just wasn't in them. If a youkai felt trapped, they lashed out. If they felt threatened, they attacked the threat or fled the scene. Not to beleaguer the obvious, but something was very wrong here.

Taishou stalked across the little room to check on the female's vitals. Her heart rate was a bit accelerated for someone unconscious and her breathing was fast but she was fine otherwise. Carefully, he lifted her to place her on the bed. Surely she would be more comfortable there than she was on the floor. Before he could reach the bed Sango's crazy feline companion leapt upon it and started clawing at the bedding. There was no place to set is burden.

"Kirara, what's wrong?" Sango asked the obvious question to anyone who wasn't Inu.

"What's wrong? She's in the way that's what's wrong," Inu no Taishou growled.

"Taishou," Kagome growled warningly. The miko reached over to draw back the covers and the little fire cat pushed them along with head and paws until the blanket was completely removed from the bed. But Kirara wasn't satisfied, she continued to claw at the bed, cutting slits in the cover sheet. "Kirara?" It was obvious the neko wanted to show them something.

Again Kagome moved to aid the little feline only Kirara's efforts had left the material to flimsy to come up in one piece. She pealed it up one strip at a time so that the mattress was slowly revealed in a peek-a-boo fashion that in no way detracted from the seriousness of what Kirara was determined they see.

"My god," Kagome breathed in horrified awe.

The mattress had been made with the stock floral covering most mattresses tended to be when put on the regular market. What had caused Kagome's out burst was not how very normal the pattern was, rather the redundant flowers seemed to make what she saw even more horrific, stained as they were by a substance even her puny human senses could not fail to identify. They were not putting the poor creature there, not as filled wit the blood of her pain as it was.

"It's all hers," Taishou said in disbelief, the smell finally reaching him once released of the chemicals and enchantments entrenched in the covers. "All of it."

Sango turned from the bed and what it meant for Akemi. This child had not spent nearly as much time here as Akemi had. Was Akemi's bed just as stained? Were the bloodstains larger, deeper? Sango growled and stalked over to the headmaster still painfully sprawled on the floor wrapped in Kagome's power. She found his hand and crushed it under her boot. "Asshole!" it was a human insult, not nearly creative enough to offend a youkai, but she didn't care. There were no better words to describe him.

"Bring her here Taishou," Kagome called to the inu still burdened by the unconscious female. "We'll try to make her comfortable on the floor. Perhaps when she wakes up she'll be a little more calm."

"Even if she were, she still wouldn't talk," a voice called from the hall. "Even if she did know who you are, Hikaru hasn't said a word since the second month of her stay."

This youkai female wore hostility around her like a shield. Her eyes ever watchful, failed to rise above their kneecaps, and she refused to come fully into view. She cowered out in the hall, obviously wary of the headmaster lying prone on the floor and glaring angrily at her. His ire seemed to cause her youki to flare defensively, but she didn't act on it.

"Don't worry about him," Sango reassured the female gently. "Kagome has him firmly underfoot," She kicked him to prove her point. "We were looking for Akemi's room. Can you direct us there?"

"Can you get me out of here?" the youkai demanded, still standing in the hallway.

Inu no Taishou shook his head, "I'll not be charged with kidnapping."

"Then you'll have to see what you can get out of Hikaru," the female sniffed. "I promise you it won't be much. We have to stay here, with them. You don't. But go ahead, ask Hikaru. She's one of the many successes around here," she spat. "Whereas I am a colossal failure," she added with a slight raise of her chin.

"We may not be able to take you with us," Kagome declared, "but I can promise that large number of the youkai in charge will be replaced before nightfall, even if I have to purify them straight to hell to accomplish it."

The youkai seemed to consider her words skeptically until she caught a good look at Kagome. "You're Akemi's miko. I know about you. Akemi used to read us your letters. When she could still write she used to change the names and give them to the new arrivals so that they could have something to believe in too," she finally stepped fully into view. "Akemi always said you would come for her. Too bad you've come too late."

"I have to know what is wrong before I can fix it," Kagome replied stoutly. "That's what I'm here to find out."

"You want to know what's wrong?" the as yet unnamed female growled. She reached out and snatch Kagome's hand before dragging the miko hurriedly out the door and down the hall to a seemingly random room before busting into it without pause, without a knock.

The exterminator was still down the hall calling worriedly after her friend. Even the Taishou had been caught by surprise and hadn't quite made it to this new door. Kagome didn't care, couldn't even take the time to notice anything beyond the wreck of a creature she saw stretched out on the new bed. Blood dripped out of wounds cast haphazardly along the area where bare skin should have shown. The fluid seeped into the stains already expanding on the surface underneath her.

"This is Crissandra. Her people live on the far western shores. She has two younger sisters and a twin brother that she hasn't seen or heard from in four years. Four years that she has been here," their informative guide told them detachedly, as if she were giving a dissertation on rock formations. "She was betrothed at the age of six like most youkai females generally are. She has not heard from her betrothed either. And now, if she were to return to them, they would not have her."

"Why not? They are her family. They sent her to this- this-," Kagome couldn't think of an appropriate word through her anger.

"She is no longer untouched," Inu no Taishou growled at what it meant.

"It shouldn't matter as it's obvious she didn't allow it," Sango growled at him. "I've yet to come across a single creature subjected to this place that didn't flinch at the slightest possibility of being touched."

"She must have allowed it," their guide parroted words she'd obviously heard too many times. "She refused to name the male that defiled her."

"She couldn't name him," Kagome whispered, her fingers gently gliding over Crissandra's curls as her power connected with the traumatic memory. "He came while she slept, attacked from behind, invaded her mind so she couldn't react, shoved his poison into her system so she couldn't fight and played with her body until it betrayed her. He hid his scent, disguised any chance for identification."

"Kagome don't," Sango cried too late as the miko detachedly lived through what she saw in Crissandra's memory.

"He knew the School's policy on bed checks," Kagome breathed in horror. "He's always known, never been caught." She realized what Crissandra had realized, what every female he'd ever touched at this school had figured out. "Even if she had known who it was, had given him up. They wouldn't have believed her." He worked for the school. "You knew this," Kagome accused the female who refused to come closer. "It happened to you also. She wishes she had helped you. She wishes she had looked beyond the short hair. Oh god." The miko's eyes widened as she drew her hand away from the girl on the bed.

The reluctant female across the room stared mildly at the miko, her eyes wary and drawn in. "They cut our hair to shame us," she declared. "Were I to go back to my family they would turn me out. I have no home in this world, but I would still seek an escape from this place. She was only in her second year. She didn't know enough to look beneath the surface yet."

"The whipping wasn't done that night," Kagome stated rather than asked.

"Oh no," the female glanced to the floor beneath the window. "That comes from allowing herself to be defiled. The whipping is done before the cutting and doubled for ever after."

"Is this what is in store for Hikaru?" Kagome early wept at the thought.

"Oh no," she shook her head at the miko. "He only goes after the colossal failures like us, the ones who don't break under the beatings, the constant put downs or the brain washing. Those of us who survived being stripped of sentimentality and abandonment are the only ones he seeks out, fully aware that those broken things that pass for successes around here could never survive him." The unnamed female rubbed her hands down her arms as if to ward off a sudden chill. Crissandra shivered in the same moment but didn't make a sound. "Akemi stopped handing out her letters after he touched her. Better to let the first years sink into despair than to give tem a false hope that would draw his eye."

"That was four years ago," Kagome observed definitively.

"The first time for Akemi, yes," the withdrawn youkai nodded. "Anyone to survive him was game for a repeat, but he was especially fond of Akemi."

"What?" the Taishou was stricken with horror but the female continued without hearing him.

"Even without the nutrients they deny us to keep our seasons at bay, Akemi conceived," she nodded to herself almost as if she had forgotten she wasn't alone.

Crissandra shifted on the bed, twisting to better observe her sister in torment. "Morenda, why are they here?" her voice was soft and modulated, no verbal indication of the pain such movement must have caused.

"They want to see Akemi's bedroom," the youkai female seem to collect herself.

"Why? There's nothing in it," Crissandra looked at the miko next to her bed. Kagome expected her to shrug or shake her head, but she did neither. This youkai and the other had obviously suffered pain and injury often enough to train them against performing useless movement. It hurt to imagine just how often that would have to be for it to sink in so well.

Crissandra's comment had pointed out a truth Kagome and Sango had summarily dismissed at the moment. There was nothing in the girls' rooms that was personal. No pictures, no trinkets, no left over toys from childhood. Just a bed stained with blood. "Why don't you have any pictures of your fam-"

Morenda snorted, "Attachment to such sentimental rubbish is childish and unappealing in a mate. A female should be stripped of such nonsense on her Thirteenth year or before the end of her Second year here, whichever comes first." She directed her gaze to some other spot on the floor, never quite lifting her eyes to more than shoulder height. "They take everything from us, clothes, trinkets, heirlooms, photos, everything. They drag all the second years out to the pit and force them to throw lit matches on top of it all until it's thoroughly blazing before herding everybody back inside again. And they make sure to catalogue it all upon arrival so there's no chance of sneaking anything out of the fire."

"You're kidding," Sango breathed. Akemi's pictures of her parents, the necklace Sesshoumaru gave her on the day of their betrothal, the jewelry boxes they made together, they couldn't all be gone.

Morenda lifted her eyes for the first time to stare at the exterminator. She didn't kid. Laughter wasn't allowed.

Kagome cupped the cheeks of Crissandra's face and raised the youkai's eyes up so that she could look into them despite the female's immediate reaction to being touched. The miko allowed a breath of her power to whisper over Crissandra's skin, wiping away every trace of her latest brush with the whip. "There's blood in your eyes, both of you," Kagome murmured sadly. She'd hoped at least Crissandra's would clear up once the pain was gone. They didn't.

"It's inevitable for children thrown into a war without defense, without warning, without a real hope for survival," Morenda answered evenly as if she were merely commenting on the weather.

"Taishou get on the Phone and call your people in," Kagome's voice was steel both abused youkai flinched away from. "I am immediately suspending this school's license to operate under the authority of miko-youkai action seventeen clause twenty-two wherein any miko may close down any reasonable source of danger to both youkai and human societies. I have seen on this day, two borderline Feral cases as a result of the programs and policies of the youkai in charge at this school. I have solid evidence of a possible third case. AS witness I have exterminator Sango of the Tajiya clans of the Western regions. Do you agree to the reality of this evidence?"

"I have seen two borderline cases, one possible third and solid evidence of abuse in a forth who will be ill prepared for her maturity when it comes and just as likely to become Feral," Sango nodded. "What say you, Taiyoukai, Inu no Taishou of the Western regions?"

"Give me your Phone, Sango," the Taishou growled. "I'll have people here within the hour."

"I want mothers and daughters, Taishou," Kagome growled. "These girls cannot trust more unmated males." The Taishou merely nodded as he headed into the hall.

"Who are you?" Crissandra breathed in something like disbelief.

"She is Akemi's miko," Morenda answered before anyone else could.

Crissandra blinked and her eyes shimmered with tears. "I thought you were a myth. That Akemi made you up," she began to cry. The female reached out and wrapped her arms around the miko. "You're real," she breathed deep of Kagome, searching for her scent.

With barely a thought Kagome dropped the barriers blocking her scent and hiding her power. She hadn't wanted to frighten these youkai by appearing in their midst as a creature that could do them lasting harm. Instead of withdrawing or tensing up at the first touch of the miko's full power Crissandra went utterly limp with relief. "You're really real," she sobbed. "You're really real."

"Yes, I'm real and I'm going to see to it that things get better for you," Kagome smoothed back Crissandra's short gold curls. "If you can't go home. I'll find you a place. I'm in your corner now. Bad things may still happen, but I'll help you fix them. If they can't be fixed, we'll find a way around them."

Taishou slipped back into the room as Crissandra was beginning to quiet her tears. "I did better than I hoped," he reported, his voice satisfied. "People will start arriving in fifteen minutes."

"Good," Kagome replied primly, as she gently lifted the youkai from her shoulder. "Crissandra, I need you to gather all the females you can so I can see them in the front common room. I need to see them all so I can properly judge what need to be done to help you. Are you strong enough to protect them until I get back?"

"Where are you going?" Crissandra sounded panicky.

"She intends to try to fix Akemi," Morenda answered.

"I thought Akemi said she was too far gone," Crissandra stared at her elder.

"She did," Morenda confirmed from her corner.

"You knew?" Sango demanded.

Morenda nodded, "Akemi taught us how to hide it. Going Feral here would do us no good. They wouldn't kill us or call the exterminators on us, it would be bad for he school and all we want, Feral or not, is to break free."

Kagome nodded, "Taishou, I want this place razed to the ground and the earth salted. The torment here will never be forgotten, but there's no reason it should be given the chance to taint anyone else." The Taishou nodded. "Sango, why don't you and Kirara take that lump of disgusting monkey dung out back and hang him on the wall in place of the females he's already got strung up there."

"With pleasure," Sango grinned maliciously as she planted her foot in the soft dangly bits that apparently made him so much better than the students here. "Oh I'm sorry, here let me help you up." The exterminator hauled him to his feet and threw him in the hall to crash against the wall opposite the door. "How clumsy of me, I should be more careful."

Sango's words faded as she continued to escort the Headmaster down the hall. Kagome shook her head with a mild smile. It was no less than he deserved, the rat bastard.


	5. Revolution

Today, I'd like to talk about language. It may seem a bit juvenile the way Kagome insulted Inu Taishou in Chapter three. Fact of the matter is, When certain words are over used (such as today's 'taboo' cuss words) they lose their meaning. For youkai, this is especially true. So if you want to actually insult one, you have to be creative. Creative in the way that little kids are creative while they skirt around using the "grown up" words they're not allowed to use. Trouble is, their vocabulary is fairly limited so they generally resort to bathroom words and compare a person's smell, intelligence, or appearance to something that would most often seem offensive. Kagome's vocabulary is a bit more developed (thankfully) and she has a bit too much class to resort to bathroom words. Not that it is particularly bad to do in Japan.

There are no japanese words that are "taboo". Insult is better conveyed by being overly polite or overly rude. It is part of why Americans are considered rude. When we learn the language, we typically master the most formal mode of it. The idea being you can never be to polite. I rather think it comes across as someone always standing at your elbow correcting your grammar. Most Americans would be highly annoyed if not completely insulted. Same goes for them.

This said, there ARE words that are considered, in themselves, to be insulting in English. WARNING: (I told you I was going to start doing this in each chapter.) There is language that could be considered offensive used in this chapter. If it upsets you to read offensive language not directed at you but at some character in the story I'm sorry to say such things happen in this chapter.

I personally don't take offense at words alone. Tone is very important, and what isn't directed at me is really hard to take offense to. But other people are more sensitive and so I'm giving this warning anyway. Words mean what we color them to mean, beyond their basic definition. If we generally use them offensively, we consider them offensive. It is simply the way of language.

Ah, I wax on...

I wonder how Rumiko Takahashi feels about it...but given that there aren't many words in the Japanese language it would be hard to translate the situation. Being overly familiar or overly formal are graver insults than a poor vocabulary. (or so I'm given to understand.)

So without further discussion, I give you the next chapter. (well except another warning about further abuse discussed - itemized really- in this chapter as well.)

**Revolution**

Kagome helped Crissandra off the bed and found that this youkai was head and shoulders taller than her. "I don't know why it surprises me when you guys are all so much taller than me, but it does," the miko smiled ruefully.

"The tora tend to run tall," Morenda dismissed it and glanced to the window. The exterminator had apparently taken a short cut out to the stonewall that served as a fence. She and Akemi had spent many a time chained to that hated thing, their backs raw from a fresh whipping and rubbing against the rough stone. The headmaster liked to keep them out there, sometimes all night, an example to those who might think to fight against the strictures of the school. They never feared attack by animals lusting for blood; the animals were too smart to come near this place. Even the Ferals, crazy as they were, wouldn't come within leagues of the grounds, not even to sniff after the females gathered here.

It was common knowledge that Feral males had only two purposes in life: one to survive, the other to procreate. Their sexual appetite was rumored to be voracious, if extremely violent. It was rumored in places far from polite ears that the Eastern Lady, after a grand disagreement with her mate, had been left vulnerable in the eastern wilds – a place rife with Feral youkai. She had returned to civilization in a sketchy state of being and shortly there after announced her pregnancy with her first son and heir to the regional seat. The boy's sexual conquests at sixteen were so prolific and extensive as to reach the ears of even a sheltered school like this one. It was uncommon in this day and age to take concubines while a betrothed is away at school and such deliciously scandalous gossip normally haunted the rooms of first years in their first months of stay.

Morenda watched as Sango bashed the headmaster's head into the wall when he foolishly thought to move without her direction. She wasn't really interested in what she saw as she flew back into her thoughts. She wondered what the young prince would think when he found out his mate-to-be was all but incapable of having children and cringed at the thought of intercourse with more than innocent reluctance. "Crissandra, perhaps you should start fulfilling the miko's request by helping her friend calm Aramanda and the rest by the wall," Morenda observed instead of thinking any further on the subject. She hated to think of him as much as she couldn't help thinking of him.

Crissandra glanced out the window and nodded. Without bothering to pull on more clothing to cover what her torn clothing had left bare, she left to do the task.

Inu no Taishou clinked after the female, surprised by her lacking modesty.

"She should have grabbed a jacket," Kagome fussed. "It's too cold outside to be wearing so little."

"We learn early to dismiss our clothing and what others might call modesty outside this school," Morenda dismissed the miko's words. "We are female. Our only purpose in life is to cater to the whims of our male and bare him progeny. We need no clothing for either therefore we should expect to be nude for much of our lives."

"That is absolutely absurd!" Kagome shoved open the window and yelled at her friend "to rack the bastard again." Sango obliged with a swift kick that lifted the howling male from the wall before falling back against it. "Taishou I will be the one to give final approval to the people you call in. I don't want some domineering bitch pushing these girls around. They've been brow-beaten enough."

"It is amazing how humans allow their women to push people around," Morenda observed wistfully. It would have been nice to have been human. To be allowed to follow her heart, ah it would have been wonderful. "You waste time worrying about us here. I thought you wanted to fix Akemi."

Suddenly, Kagome was too close to her for comfort. The miko's presence was an intense pressure along the abused female's skin. It had been bearable before because Crissandra was present, Hikaru was present, even the headmaster had a piece of Kagome's attention. Now her full attention was focused on Morenda and it was cause for discomfort. Attention was bad.

"You were Akemi's friend," Kagome declared in a soft firm voice and Morenda snorted.

"One does not make friends with the fellow inmates of hell," she replied shortly. "Akemi was admired and looked up to, even in her shame, even as she slowly broke in front of us. We were protected by her because it was in her to protect until they broke her of it," Morenda added bitterly.

"But you protect them too," Kagome pointed out.

"No, I observe and hand down Akemi's advice," Morenda denied it. "The inu protect. Former Shiroinu most especially. The Kuroneko do not."

"You're betrothed to the eastern prince," Inu no Taishou breathed in recognition. "The brat never stops bragging about you. The last of the Kuroineko."

"I'll not allow it," Kagome said fiercely. "I'll not let Morenda be thrown to that unfaithful sexual deviant! She'd never survive it!"

Morenda scoffed, "As if he'd have me once he knows the truth."

Kagome grabbed her chin and lifted Morenda's face. "Never do that. You are proud and you are strong. Nothing that happened here is your fault and no one can shame you for surviving it. You look down for no one. You bow down to no one. The Kuroneko were a good and proud people and their best traits live on in you, are exemplified by you. I'll tar and feather any fool who says otherwise, even you." The miko shook Morenda's chin firmly. "Morenda's coming with us."

"Wait a minute Kagome," the Taishou protested.

"Miko jurisdiction," Kagome put simply. "Let her family try to argue with me about it in court. I'd like a few words with them about this anyway. Come on." She led the way into the hall. "Morenda, we need to ferret out all the worst of the males in residence. I want them strung out there with the headmaster where they belong."

"All of the teachers are male," Morenda answered.

"What?" Taishou was outraged. That was certainly not widely disclosed; else he'd not have sent Akemi here, no matter the reputation.

"Who better to know what a male wanted in a mate than another male?" Morenda asked sarcastically. "The cook, nasty as he is, never ordered a beating for failing to eat his food. He wouldn't hold a meal for anyone, and if you didn't attend at the proper time you didn't eat. And since he expected every female's cooking ability to be lousy, females being decidedly inferior in intellect and ability, he more often than not handed out praise than beatings because it was almost impossible not to exceed his expectations. His praise was reluctantly given, but given all the same. Unfortunately, once you succeeded sufficiently at a subject it was dropped from the schedule." It was obvious by Morenda's sigh that it had been a long time since she'd lost that subject.

"The writing instructor was usually fairly decent unless your penmanship began to worsen," her eyes darkened. "He would order Akemi whipped for her inability to improve after she backslid so far."

"He's one for the wall," Kagome growled sweetly. "Please continue."

"The male who taught deportment used to break her fingers for forgetting to keep them properly curved during formal ceremonies," Morenda added, catching on quick that Kagome's best measure was how each male in question had treated Akemi. "He progressed to breaking her arm after, after, um, they cut her hair."

"I'll have Sango relocate his balls," Kagome glowered.

"The dance instructor was fine with Akemi so long as she could move. She was lucky to have such inborn rhythm and understanding of movement. Most awkward first years had him though. He likes to tie them down and drip water on them to literally drill the beat into them." Morenda continued blandly. "Few have to suffer him very long. It is a most effective punishment. And the rhythm is all that's required."

"The singing master is harmless at least. The worst thing about his class is him screeching at you about voice modulation. It gets his point across though implementation is up to us. Many a beating resulted because a female failed to keep her voice low. The only time anyone received a beating while in his class was when the headmaster sat in on them."

"He may live," Kagome sniffed magnanimously. "But the dance guy is going down."

"Our needle classes are not actually taught," Morenda continued in the same serious low tone. "We are given an assignment and expected to figure out and complete it within the time allowed. Akemi used to be exceptionally good at it. She would complete as many of the other female's assignments as she could and accept the beating at the end of it. Once the shaking set in she could barely finish her own on time on the rare occasion her arm wasn't broken or she wasn't recovering from being whipped for her writing classes. We only had a male to supervise the class and dole out punishment. We barely saw him otherwise."

"There's a spot for him on the wall too," the Taishou growled evenly.

"There's the bed checkers, but they only dealt out punishment if girls weren't in their beds without authorization so it never happened. We don't even see them most of the time," Morenda added.

"Who's left?" Kagome prodded.

"Only the worst one," Morenda answered reluctantly. "But there's nothing you can do about him."

"I'm a miko, I can do something!"

"No, Kagome," Morenda pleaded with the miko. "Do not engage him. If you engage him, he will win and expect his prize at the end."

"What prize?" Kagome demanded.

"Why to fuck the powerful female, of course," a deep bass voice chuckled out of a nearby door. "Little neko cunt, what are you doing in the company of strangers? WE shall have to beat you again."

"Kagome back off," Inu Taishou growled urgently as he stepped in front of the little miko. He now knew why Morenda had urged Kagome against fighting with this male.

Arctic Cobras were a dieing race, their species was unknown, but their battle prowess was second only to their singular drive to search out and fuck every powerful female they could get at. Many didn't survive their blood sport, even fewer their bed sport, but it was instinct in them to search out a body capable of conceiving and producing their offspring. No species was safe for Cobras cared only that a body was female (though there were rumors that even that criteria had been overlooked more than once). What fool had been stupid enough to allow this bastard to work in a youkai school for girls?

"A pretty little breeder like you isn't off limits, miko," the bastard grinned at Kagome behind her soon to be in-law. "Should I challenge your protector to see if my seed will take root in a human womb?"

"They are here about Akemi," Morenda said quickly, drawing his attention from the miko despite the tremors of fear that skated down her spine.

"The little inu bitch? She was released against my advice. I told the fool headmaster she was only faking their success," he rumbled disinterestedly. "He should have given me more time with her. Have they come to return her for further training?" He looked decidedly interested in that bit of information.

"I have not yet seen Akemi," the Taishou growled in disgust, but whether it was directed at the Arctic Cobra or himself he couldn't be certain.

"So she escaped," he smirked. "You should have been ready and waiting with her chains. Now she must be hunted and the one to find her will be me. As she has left herself with no owner, I will greatly enjoy this hunt." Kagome's stomach rebelled at the look on his face. "Why don't you run too little neko cunt, make this hunt even more interesting?"

Morenda paled but held herself statue still as he purposely walked too close past her. "You didn't tell me Akemi broke free," she turned on the miko the moment he was gone.

"Does it matter?" Kagome blinked.

"I would have warned you not to let him know," Morenda for the first time since the miko met her performed a nervous, useless gesture. "Krell was the only one who could track her down without scent. It was the only reason her attempts to escape failed before they chained her down."

Kagome watched Morenda carefully. "Who is Krell?"

"The weapons master. The more we failed in our other subjects the more time we were forced to spend with him," Morenda muttered in agitation.

"So they did teach you to defend yourselves," the Taishou nodded, the school wasn't a complete waste.

Morenda stared at him. "What would a female have to defend herself for? If she were prized her male would adequately protect her. If she wasn't it was best she accept her punishment without struggle. Surely you do not believe she should defend herself against a mate?"

"But a weapons master surely indicates –"

"We were taught to withstand a beating," Morenda sliced through his words. "The utter failures spent the most time with him because they would obviously be punished the most by their male's displeasure."

"He's also the one defiling you," Kagome observed.

"We don't know that," Morenda turned away. "We suspect, but we have nothing solid."

"Akemi knew, that's why he didn't want her released," Kagome asserted firmly.

"If it is Krell," Morenda glanced back at the miko. "He didn't want her released because she conceived when she shouldn't have been able."

"You said that before," Kagome pointed out. "What happened to it?"

"She didn't know until she bled it out after a beating," Morenda shuddered. "We had been whipped and chained to the wall, but there's no mistaking the smell of a life giving up. She had been two months along. They kept her up there a second night alone, as punishment for failing to protect the life of her young even if it wasn't the young of her mate. I found out the next morning that he had gone to her again that night."

"What?" Kagome gasped in horror as Sango caught up with them outside what appeared to serve as a teacher's lounge.

"She still didn't see him then," Inu no Taishou couldn't believe it.

"Inu have notoriously bad night vision, plus it was a new moon. No one on that side of the building would have had a light on to cast the glow outside, so it's very likely no one else would have been able to see him either," Morenda scoffed. "Besides Akemi was light-headed from blood loss and hunger going into it. She didn't even know he was there until he'd lifted her up to give him enough slack in the chains to turn her around. He scented and licked up the blood of his offspring ejected from her body and he made her enjoy it. Then he rode her again. He didn't bother to invade her mind to make her responsive. He let her scream into the wilds in pleasure and pain as he toyed with her body and filled her with his seed," Morenda spat the last word. "He didn't finish with her until dawn began to poke its fingers through the trees. The he walked away and let her fall. It was the first time one of us had scrapes from the stone down the front."

"Where is this bastard so I can kill him?" Sango demanded.

"Later, Sango," Kagome shook her head. "But for now," the miko shoved open the door to the all male teacher's lounge. "Which one is the deportment instructor?"

Morenda glanced carefully inside over Kagome's shoulder. "The one drinking tea."

Kagome nodded her head sharply, "Sango, relocate his balls."

Sango grinned at the youkai evilly, "With pleasure." She needed no further explanation. If Kagome, the least bloodthirsty person she knew, said to do it, it was probably more than deserved. "Oh look you spilled your tea, how silly of you." She marched him out in a similar fashion as she had the headmaster.

"Which are the cooking and singing instructors?" Kagome demanded. One male blanched and another fainted.

"That'd be them," Morenda confirmed.

"Congratulations," Kagome smiled at the one still conscious. "You may be a slimy, soul-sucking son of an egg-stealing snake, but you're decent enough to be left off the wall. You may even some day be able to get a job as a short order cook or male prostitute. Not anytime soon though." Her eyes moved elsewhere as the male wet himself. "As for the rest of you," she let her voice fill with menace. "Is there anyone in particular, you wanted to handle Inu no Taishou?'

"Oh the writing instructor, of course," the Taishou rumbled almost pleasantly.

"Oh no, he's mine," Kagome denied him.

"Then I'll take the other two," he shrugged amicably enough.

"If you'll identify mine, Morenda?" Kagome nodded. "We'll see these fools to their proper places."

"Who are you?"

"I'm afraid all questions shall simply have to wait until everyone has assumed their assigned position." Kagome reached out with her power and locked it around the talkative fool. "Coming Taishou?"

"Right behind you," he announced as he threw his two fools through the wall onto the front lawn. He was going to take the scenic route. Inu were protective by nature and he had a lot to pay them back for on Akemi's behalf.

Morenda blinked, "But he said –"

"Technically, he is behind me as I'm headed to the back of the school and he just threw them out the front. My back is in that direction," Kagome turned. "See," she laughed lightly as she began to move forward, her youkai dragging on the ground behind her, gasping for breath and struggling with pain.


	6. Retribution

This chapter has a rather humorous edge to it... well some of it, mostly it's still dark. Maybe I'm weird to find humor in something so very dire, but then, I find humor in all things.

THis chapter is more about tieing up loose ends at the school and starting the hunt for Akemi. They have to rescue her from the evil Krell.

You know, sometimes I wonder where the hell I come up with these names. My spell check spazzes out everytime I do it too.

Then again, Rumiko Takahashi made up some of the weirdest ones herself. Did you know that Inuyasha literally means _female_ dog demon? If he was American, do you think he'd be named Sue?

Ah, no real warning this chapter. There's only some slight gore discussed and violence. nothing serious if you've ever played a video game.

**Retribution**

By the time Kagome and Morenda made it outside with their captive the first member of the cavalry had already arrived and started making her way to where the commotion was.

Apparently the headmaster was thoroughly pissed and treated no better than the females that had been placed so trustingly into his care. Sango elbowed him firmly in the kidney as she finished her work on the deportment teacher hanging rather limp with shock. "Oh I'm sorry. I'm so clumsy you know," she stepped back and smirked up at the loud mouth with her arms crossed.

"Just you wait until the Northern Lord hears about this-" he began ever so loudly. He had finally given up on ignoring the human female only to shout everything in her direction like he was certain shear volume was the only way to make her understand. She, of course, being too stupid to have full control of her faculties.

"I'm fairly certain the Northern Lord will be completely filled in on the situation the moment he arrives," the newcomer smirked up at the overly vocal youkai chained to the wall. "Which should be about five minutes after he realizes I've left. Only, I don't think he will react the way you seemingly think he will."

"Lady North," Sango bowed slightly.

"Sango," the lady nodded in return and the headmaster's eyes bugged out. If the Lady of a territory not home to the exterminator knew her by name… It could only mean the slayer was someone of consequence and reputation. The Northern Lady eyed the bloodied youkai Sango had strung up beside the overly vocal fool. It looked as though an actual youkai female had gotten to him, impressive feat for a human female to accomplish. "You do nice work."

Sango acknowledged the compliment but said nothing.

"Here's another for the wall," Kagome slapped her prisoner up against it face first.

"Shall I rough him up?" Sango asked.

"Morenda, is he the writing instructor?" Kagome asked.

"Yes," Morenda answered softly, suddenly trying to hide behind the miko.

"Break his fingers and whatever else you feel like breaking," Kagome declared evenly. "This one's responsible for a good number of Akemi's whippings."

"With Pleasure," Sango nodded grimly.

"This is about that inu bitch?" the youkai fated for broken fingers demanded incredulously.

"That 'inu bitch,'" Sango answered him darkly, "saved my life when she was seven." He stared at the exterminator in horror. The Taijiya were protective and loyal to the youkai they befriended. They were all in deep shit. "And you, your fellows and this school brutalized her," Sango snapped one of the restraints around his wrist. It chaffed horribly, meant to contain smaller joints than his. "You abused her," the other snapped into place. "And you tried to break her with shame and horror. Instead you only drove her nearly Feral with mental, emotional, and physical trauma." She drew back to stare him in the eyes. "Prepare yourself for a lot of pain, because now you're gong to pay for it and every other female you've ever hurt."

"Does the situation truly merit all this?" Lady North evenly observed the proceedings. She didn't say it as if she questioned the validity of Sango's anger or the miko's justice. Rather she demanded to _know_ the entirety of the situation.

But there wasn't time just yet. "Yes," Kagome answered. The one word infused with such raw conviction it nearly sent the youkai lady back a step.

Instead of allowing herself to retreat any further or even bothering to question the miko further, the Northern Lady willfully hung her attention on the vaguely familiar youkai cowering behind Kagome. "Morenda?" and the youkai in question became even more tense, striving to shrink away from her sight.

Kagome had noticed her newest charge was nervous around the other female, she simply hadn't realized it was because Morenda was afraid to be recognized. The kuroineko was afraid to meet the people who had known her before this school more than she feared the opinion and treatment of strangers. Family and former friends would be better judges of how far Morenda had fallen. Kagome felt stupid for not perceiving it before. Akemi had probably felt the same at one point, but her stay had been so long Akemi had most likely talked her way around it as being blamed on the passage of time. Morenda had not been here as long as Akemi and Kagome's eyes stung with that knowledge. "Don't touch her, Anya," the miko halted the Northern Lady's advance gently.

"Kagome?" Lady Anya inquired of Kagome softly.

"All the females here have been through hell," Kagome answered. "You'll make them nervous advancing on them like that and we want the to relax."

"I was right then," Anya declared still keeping her voice soft. "You are Morenda, heir to the ancient kuroineko line, worshipped as gods in Ancient Egypt. The honored betrothed of the Eastern Prince."

"Those times were long ago, Lady North," Morenda sent her gaze skittering to the side. Her voice dark with emotion she could not properly express nor contain.

"Stop that Morenda," Kagome grabbed the neko's chin. "You are no less than Anya who honors you. Do not look away."

"What has happened to you?" Anya demanded.

"These insecure, fools of misrepresented manhood happened to them," Inu no Taishou dropped his bloodied prisoners on the ground in front of the open spots on the wall. "Would you like to string them up, taijiya, or should I do the honors?"

"I've got it, Taishou," Sango announced.

"Lord West," Anya nodded.

"Lady North," the Taishou nodded back.

"We were not informed of your coming," Anya observed.

"The miko made me do it," Inu no Taishou replied with a shrug.

"Who are you?" came from the youkai strung upon the wall.

"I," Kagome glowered at them, allowing her power to crackle against their skin, "am the youngest Shikon miko in the history of the Four Regions. For what you have done I should have you stripped, whipped, then strung up against the wall, painted with honey to be feasted upon by ants. Only to then see you be taken down coated in female pheromones and left stranded in Feral infested territory. But I am not like you and it wouldn't pay for nearly a fraction of the hell you've created here. It isn't my place to judge, but to stop you and heal the damage that you have done." Kagome scowled and the youkai chained before her gulped in fear. "You brought this upon yourselves. By harming Akemi, you brought my eyes here and for what I have seen you will be severely punished. Do not for one moment think you will escape it. Youkai are not terribly lenient when they discover a place such as this that produces Ferals at such an astonishing rate, especially females."

"Anya, What do you think you're doing disappearing like that?" a boisterous voice demanded as a new youkai arrived.

"Lord North," Taishou nodded again and the other lord began to slow his approach, uncertain as to what the situation could be that would draw West, Sango, and a Shikon Miko this far into his territory without his knowledge.

"We had an emergency," Anya answered her mate, completely unrepentant over "disappearing" on him.

"What emergency?" He asked cautiously.

"This," Anya reached out to snag Morenda's chin.

She moved too quickly, tried to touch one overly afraid of it. Morenda reacted instantly. The near Feral youkai female reared back and snarled at the Anya's hand hovering near her face. Her teeth were bared and a defensive growl crawled out of her throat.

"Anya, I told you not to," Kagome glared at the Lady over her shoulder before turning her attention on the terrified, defensive female growling over her shoulder. Morenda refused to look away from the threat, her instincts refusing to let her defenses be lowered. Kagome sucked her teeth before reaching up slowly to grasp both sides of Morenda's face. "Shh, Morenda. You need to calm down. They won't touch you; I won't let them. You're not staying with them. You're coming with me."

"Morenda?" the Northern Lord gasped. "As in the Eastern heir, Horace's Morenda? The little neko that used to climb the fruit trees in the arbor, Morenda?"

"Yes." Anya nodded.

"Morenda let me see you girl. You used to chase the birds out of the bird bath in the back garden and –what's the matter?" Lord North blinked at the still tense neko, beginning to finally grasp that all was not right in the world. "I don't understand."

"It's all right," Kagome whispered to the youkai she was still trying to soothe. Morenda was slowly, slowly starting to relax her guard enough to finally look down into her face. "They do not understand. We need to show them. They must know so that the fools will be properly punished. You are staying with me, but the other girls are not. They need to see how to care for them, how to help them. They are worried about you, but you are staying with me. All Right? All right."

"What do I do?" Morenda asked timidly.

Kagome smiled, "Simply look them in the eyes. Your eyes will tell them enough for now. See my evidence Magnus, and know that Akemi showed me the same eyes this day."

"Feral?" Magnus gasped at the change in the female he recognized from years past. The sweet, precocious little girl was never meant to come to this. It tore at him that it could ever happen to someone so innocent.

"Not quite," Kagome shook her head. "But it will not take much to push her over the edge."

"Miko!" a voice called across the grounds as Crissandra came from the building. She skirted around the other youkai to hide behind Morenda and Kagome. "I brought as many of the others out to the lawn as could come. Aramanda refused to go back inside."

"She would want to keep an eye on the headmaster and the rest," Morenda nodded. "It will soothe them to see the danger restrained."

"I got all but ten out," Crissandra told Kagome earnestly. "The rest wouldn't listen to me or let me help them." She raised her hand up to brush against her shorn curls as if that were the reason for the reluctance of the others. Crissandra absently glanced over the wall and went visibly rigid when she noticed one person was missing. "Where's Krell?"

"Hunting Akemi," Morenda answered succinctly as her sister in pain tugged fearfully at her shoulder.

"What!" Crissandra gasped in horror. "There's no time for this! We need to go!"

"Crissandra, you're staying," Kagome corrected her. "Remember I need you –"

"Aramanda can do it. She'd be better at it anyway," Crissandra cut her off almost cringing at her own daring, but urgency drove her to it.

"Morenda?"

"She's right Kagome. Aramanda's father taught her to spar and she's protective to a fault. She'll see to it no one abuses the others at cost to herself if it comes to that," Morenda answered. "There is no time now."

"Damn." Kagome muttered. "Anya, come with me. I'm going to brief and possibly rude, but Akemi is alone, border-line Feral and being hunted by her repeat rapist."

"Wha-"

"There's no time for in depth explanations," the Taishou cut her off. "Krell is an Arctic Cobra. He's had free run of the older girls and at the very least beaten on all the rest of them."

"An Arctic Cobra…" Anya breathed in disbelief that bordered on horrified denial.

"He's touched all the girls with short hair," Kagome nodded. "The rest have been abused so badly they're beyond shrinking violets. This Hell's nest is going to require years to sort out and heal. But right now, I have to go save Akemi, so I need you to watch over them. Possibly for the next couple days."

"Understood," Anya nodded firmly, eyes determined.

"The first thing I want done is I want that place burnt to the ground, so you'll need to get the last of the girls out and the supplies to house them outside for now. I don't know how they'll handle the shock of being moved out of the country." Kagome spouted orders in a rapid-fire manner.

"We shall roast marshmallows and barbeque over it." Anya declared.

Kagome shrugged, "whatever's you're bliss. Magnus, before they burn it down I need to get out everything regarding the girls' families and origins. I'll be meeting each family before we decide to allow them access to their daughters. And Make sure the first years get their personal effects out. They're the only ones to still have any and I don't want them to lose them due to poor planning. Can you do that for me?"

"For all the Morenda's and Akemi's we're preventing, I can do more than that," Lord North nodded.

Kagome glanced at Morenda, "Don't take it like that. He is honoring your struggle by not wishing it on any others, not declaring you a national disaster." Kagome glanced to the huddled girls that were beginning to shrink violently away from her approaching entourage. "Who's Aramanda?"

"Who are you?" demanded a feisty dark-haired female barely taller than Kagome. "You keep them back or pay the consequences!" she assumed a defensive stance pressing the closest over her fellows behind her for protection.

"She is Akemi's miko," Morenda answered gently. Again the word miko seemed to take on a life of its own as it flowed through the pack of youkai.

"Akemi's no longer here," the dark-haired defender declared. She could only be the protective Aramanda.

"I know," Kagome answered softly. "She's being hunted, and I need to go help her. But I cannot leave you here undefended and alone."

"The worst of them is still free," Aramanda shook her head and shivered.

"Yes," Kagome answered. "But he is gone from here for now, and the others are hung upon the wall right this minute. You no longer need fear abuse from them any more. But others might do things that hurt you out of ignorance or a lack of empathy. That's why I wish to leave Aramanda in charge. I was told she would be best at protecting the others. I need her to work with my friend Anya while I am gone."

"I am Aramanda," the dark-haired female answered. "What does the Northern Lady want done?"

"Well, ladies," Anya smiled. "I thought we'd have a bon-fire of this building here. We could cook our meat over it in celebration of a victory over evil and suffering." Aramanda grinned with a rare glee only the long abused can show.

Kagome lead the way to the front of the building.

"We ready to leave?" the Taishou asked impatiently.

"Taishou, call your son," Kagome ordered and he blanched. "Have him meet us at the house."

"Here you go Taishou," Sango shoved her youkai phone at the Inu no Taishou. "Kirara," the fire cat flared into her larger form for Kagome and Sango to ride. "Let's get a move on. We've still got to explain the situation when we get there before we start tracking Akemi to rescue her."

Crissandra glanced at Morenda. This would be more time wasted in which Krell would be closing in on Akemi. And there wasn't even a certainty they had a way of hunting Akemi in the first place.


	7. Anticipation

Hurray Sesshoumaru's turn!

I took a different interpretation of the quiet demon lord this time around. It doesn't really come to the surface right away though. He's just strange that way. Everything about him is rather subtle because he was trained to behave a certain way from a very young age.

Please remember that his father is Inu no Taishou, the worst judge of character ever born. Now imagine having to grow up under someone who both doesn't understand you and constantly pushes you to be different than your natural tendencies would guide you to be.

Then remember what it did to Akemi. I think, it's very painful to be constantly forced into being almost the complete opposite of who and what you are. It makes me feel very sad to think what it did to Akemi, left to the hands of strangers, molded into something she was never meant to be. She went crazy. How would Sesshoumaru handle it?

oh, and there's nothing particularly needing warning in this chapter. Miroku shows up, Inuyasha says his piece and the plot moves along. Mostly, it's all Sesshoumaru though...because he is my favorite character to write. Rumiko Takahashi left him wide open for interpretation by not having him talk so much. If he doesn't talk, he must think, and with his poker face, he could be thinking about anything. I love that.

Also, the definition of chivalrous love, is to act outside of your character to prove that feeling. So if he seems to act beyond what you think of him, just know that drastic situations bring out the craziness in everybody. Besides, everything Sesshoumaru does is so understated, it's really hard to tell.

**Anticipation**

The sweet water sluiced pleasantly over his heated skin, rinsing the day's work from his body.

It was difficult for most people to reconcile the careful, stoic image promoted by the Western heir with the reality of his preferences and inner personality. No one unblessed with a long intimate friendship with Sesshoumaru would ever believe he ever could enjoy the many tasks of building a house from the ground up, mostly alone, and all by hand. But that had been his driving project for the last five years.

To the public, he was too good for menial labor. The idea was incongruous with the general perception of his character. He had to be above such plebian endeavors. The duties of an heir seldom required hands on participation in anything. Sesshoumaru was trained to be manager, supervisor, the top of every task, over others who did the actual work.

Fact was, he liked working with his hands. It felt good to create something useful; to see it take shape until the finer details emerged and it took on the semblance of a life of its own. But that was only part of it.

Five years ago, he'd begun his project to build the house at the edge of his father's lands. It was to be a house for Akemi, a gift to give her privacy until she was ready to mate.

Inu no Taishou probably thought he ment to isolate her, to control her, to dominate her. Sesshoumaru didn't care. His father was wrong.

He'd begun the house knowing Akemi was to return long before it would have been finished. He had thought, after she returned, she could help him with it. It was to be her house after all; he wanted her to be able to pick things out the way she wanted. After so many years, her tastes might have changed and it would have been a good way to become reacquainted with his betrothed, to assess the changes of time, maturity and their separate experiences had wrought.

Then the Taishou had extended her stay at school. Then he extended it again, and the house progressed beyond the point where Sesshoumaru could wait on Akemi's preferences and help.

Sesshoumaru couldn't remember when his project had become his obsession. It was his only link to the absent mate of his heart, the only way to keep her close.

He missed her.

Initially the house had been something of a secret, as secret as such a project could be any way. The Inu no Taishou started to ride Sesshoumaru about his secret project when his heir began to forsake his bed to work on it. By that point the structure had progressed to the point where he could conceivably sleep on-site. Which he did. Which gave rise to the Taishou discovering just what Sesshoumaru was working on. What he spent every spare moment working on.

It was upon this discovery that the vague idea Sesshoumaru had been harboring unnamed under his skin, solidified into something recognizable. It was his belief, unfounded and whimsically ridiculous, that drove him. Somehow the thought had occurred to him through a series of unconnected fragments, that Akemi would return to him when it was finished.

Foolish and preposterous.

But it was the only thing that kept him sane some days.

Sesshoumaru had never been closer to another creature than he had been to Akemi. He had connected with her from the start, when she came to them a lonely little girl without protection from the world.

Akemi, at six years old, had gravitated to him without anxiety or trepidation when youkai many years her senior had trembled in fear in her place. And she had greater reason to fear. Not him necessarily, but she had reason to fear others in general. She had been alone, in a strange place, surrounded by strangers, and far from the only home she had ever known. Instead she'd fearlessly found him in his mother's garden feeding the koi. No one had dared trespass on his mother's garden before her, not because of an order or any impediment. Rather, they were scared of him and what he might do to any trespasser.

At ten, he already had a strength that rivaled many youkai far older than he and his private personality drove others to think him cold. In his mother's garden he could be himself, free of the masks he was forced to wear in public. In his mother's garden he didn't have to hide the loneliness he felt everywhere he went.

As the heir, he was expected to be a certain way, behave a certain way. It was a tall order for a youkai as young as Sesshoumaru had been and left him feeling cut off from everyone else. Sometimes he felt as if he were being cut off from himself as well.

Along came Akemi who kneeled at the side of the pool to watch the fish. She'd looked up at him to share her simple smile of delight with the bright fat fish darting to the surface in search of the food he threw. He'd fallen hard and fast.

She amazed him with her ability to smile, when all who'd come before her hardly managed to do more than tremble. She was adrift in the world, more so than he, but she failed to lose her joy in what was around her.

Sesshoumaru never wanted to be without her after that. He loved to watch her, her curiosity, her generosity, and her fierce courage. She was a leader, natural born, and made friends easily. She was the best judge of character he'd ever known and Akemi made sure he felt the benefit of it.

And she was mischievous, she even pulled him willingly into trouble and he loved every minute of it.

Sesshoumaru turned off the hot water and the let the shower chill him a few minutes longer, hoping to rinse way some of the tingling excitement.

His physical attraction to Akemi had hit him like a freight train when he was fourteen. Sesshoumaru growled to himself, she hadn't yet turned ten. That year she'd begun to sprout up like a weed and she'd felt extremely awkward doing anything that wasn't out of doors. Her limbs were suddenly too long for her to know what to do with them. She used to whine to him about it and he would complain about his studies before they'd fall into a companionable silence for no words of comfort could be offered for either complaint.

They had always been like that. Openly complaining about their personal vulnerabilities and stresses before sinking into a silence in which neither felt the need to jabber away to break the peacefulness of the moment. Akemi could give him the peace he needed while remaining near him in tactile comfort and kindness. He would have been content if things never changed.

But that year, he had begun feeling a pressure under his skin in her presence, an unidentifiable urge to do _some_thing when she was near. He didn't know what it was. Initially Sesshoumaru dismissed it as his imagination; the unnamed sensation didn't interfere with the peace he found in her presence so it was likely a hiccup in his own changing body, a response to age and stress. Only it began to grow in strength until it became a shouted demand inside his head clamoring for attention that stirred up at the oddest times, but only ever in Akemi's presence. He hadn't known what to do until his amber eyes had settled on her under the mistletoe at the Christmas party his father threw.

The cacophony of discordant thoughts on the subject instantly resolved into a single euphonious impulse so urgent and powerful he was kissing the daylights out of her before he knew what he was about. Sesshoumaru had tilted her chin, pressed his mouth to hers and held her so tight it was a wonder he didn't break her. It had been most wondrous and heavenly and so very, very wrong. Akemi was too young.

When he had regained his self-control, Sesshoumaru forced himself to apologize to her. Akemi had smiled up at him gently and forgiven him without reservation, she was inu too. She wasn't ready to go further and they both knew it. He'd promised her then that she would decide when they were to mate. Control had been pounded into him since he was very young; it was about time he found some good from it. Now that he knew what he wanted, he could guard himself from seizing it out of hand.

Then his father caught them, thankfully after their words were exchanged. Sadly the Taishou had seen him kiss his betrothed. Inu no Taishou, in that moment, made his decision to send Akemi away to school. Or it was more likely that the decision had been made previously but held off deliberately so as not to diminish the holiday revelry.

Sesshoumaru was initially uneasy for Akemi but could do nothing about it. It was clear his father did not understand him any more than he ever had and any effort made to delay or change the Taishou's action would not be kindly received. It could even wind up harming Akemi's situation instead of helping her.

Instead he had reaffirmed his promise. Akemi would not find herself forced into a mating immediately upon returning home, like so many youkai females did. Sesshoumaru would hold to his promise no matter how his body clamored for her when he finally saw her again. Not for the first time, he wished he were the younger of them. If he had been, it was possible they never would have been separated.

Sesshoumaru turned the water off and stepped out onto the mat reaching for his towel. When his father had finally decided Akemi could come home, he had decided his project should be completely finished for her return. Today had been necessary to put the finishing touches on his gift to Akemi. His stomach quivered with nerves over finally being able to present it to the one he'd built it for. In a way it was as if he were presenting her with himself, the parts of him that couldn't be seen.

He hoped she loved it.

Sesshoumaru stepped into his clothes, specially picked out for today. He normally wasn't so interested in his appearance, but he wanted to attract Akemi using everything he was, that included his image, the strength of his body, of his youki and the power of his mind. Today would begin his courting.

Others might believe a betrothal negated the need for winning the female over, but Akemi was too good for him not to. It would only bring him grief if he were to ignore her feelings and make assumptions about what she would want in a relationship. Courting would teach them both that.

Besides, Sesshoumaru wanted to know Akemi mated him for more than honor and politics, power and position. He wanted to know it was because she wanted him, everything he was and could give her. She would be the only person who knew him, the parts of him he showed no one else. Akemi had been that person before; he desired she be that person again.

"Sesshoumaru," Inuyasha called through the bathroom door. "Hey, ice prick, I think Kagome and Sango have found a problem."

Sesshoumaru's gut jerked in reaction. Something was wrong with Akemi; he could feel it. Abruptly he opened the door into the hallway. "Explain."

"Inu no Taishou called from Sango's phone," Miroku answered down the hall. "Apparently Kagome found ground to pull out her authority up North, but how it connects with the errand they were sent to carry out, we haven't been informed."

"Which means what?" Sesshoumaru demanded.

"Something really, really bad," Miroku shrugged.

"All dad said was that they would meet us here in less than an hour and to be ready to move out," Inuyasha explained.

"No mention was made of Akemi," Miroku added. "Seriously guys, Kagome dug up something really, really bad in the Northern Country."

"What would Kagome be doing in the Northern Territory?" Inuyasha scoffed. "They were just supposed to go to the train station. Dad didn't even tell us what he was doing with Kagome and Sango."

Sesshoumaru stalked down the hall towards his father's study before a thought struck him stationary. Wait. "What is it you know, monk?" Inuyasha may be tempestuously given to exaggeration and hyperbole in his speech, but the hanyou never did so when conveying messages from the Taishou. If his younger pack sibling declared their father said something and only that, then that is exactly what the Inu no Taishou said. So Miroku had to be getting his information somewhere else.

"Apparently Sango and Kagome dragged the Taishou to a school in the North," Miroku sighed and ran his hand over his hair. "What they found…" the human shook his head. "I'm not certain, but whatever it was, Kagome shut the school down and Taishou' been calling people in. Very specific people and I have a suspicion the whole things has something to do with Akemi. It's too much of a coincidence. Especially if Inu no Taishou is traveling here under his own power as it seems he is."

Inuyasha stared at Miroku, "I hope you're wrong." Unlike the Taishou, Sesshoumaru's half brother had a better understanding of what the western heir felt for his betrothed. He and Miroku had just spent the better part of the day helping him finish up the house built for her after all.

"The monk is probably right," Sesshoumaru continued on his way to the study, much as he wanted to rage and pace and otherwise convey his emotion; it wasn't the time or the place. He had to remain cool and calm until he knew the whole situation. Then he would quite possibly emasculate his father, permanently.

"I hope Akemi is all right," Inuyasha fisted his right hand as they all gathered around the Taishou's desk. Akemi had been a friend to him too. Had helped Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru relate better as pack and Inuyasha was well aware of how desperately they had both needed it. The thought that she could be in serious trouble set his blood to churning.

"Inuyasha," Miroku began wearily. "If what I suspect is true, Akemi hasn't been all right for a while. And I suspect Kagome sensed it."

"What do you mean?" Inuyasha demanded.

"Hasn't Kagome asked to visit Akemi's school before?"

"The school doesn't accept visitors," Inuyasha answered.

"Do you remember when Kagome started asking to visit Akemi?" Miroku patiently redirected his questioning. Inuyasha wasn't the sharpest when it came to making intuitive or even logical conclusions. "Was it from the very beginning?"

"No it was completely out of the blue," Inuyasha frowned. "About four years ago."

Sesshoumaru also remembered the first time Kagome asked to visit Akemi. It had struck him as odd timing as it wasn't around a holiday or school break. "What are you getting at monk?"

"Sango told me that Kagome has the ability to sense when danger threatens the people she cares about. Kagome has never been wrong," Miroku answered. "Did she ever stop asking to visit Akemi after she started?"

"No, but she never said anything about Akemi being in danger," Inuyasha shook his head. "She just kept…asking." Which wasn't like Kagome now that he thought about it.

Kagome may ask for something occasionally, but if she couldn't have it she didn't persist on asking for it. He should have known something was wrong, "Why didn't she tell me?" Inuyasha wondered aloud.

"What could you have done?" Sesshoumaru asked blandly. It was clear Inuyasha could have done no more than Sesshoumaru and for less reason as neither of them had known where Akemi had been sent to school. If the Inu no Taishou had chosen to ignore Kagome then he would have ignored his two sons as well. After all, Inuyasha would only have pursued the subject on Kagome's behest, and Sesshoumaru could only want something done so he could get at Akemi like a rabid dog.

It wasn't the truth, but that's how the Taishou would have perceived their behavior.

"Kagome probably didn't tell you so you wouldn't have to worry pointlessly," Miroku shrugged. "You couldn't help her rescue Akemi and you couldn't offer reassurance. Besides, how often did you two talk about Akemi?"

Inuyasha growled in frustration. "Still, I want to know when my female is worried about something. I want to know what she's worried about," the hanyou's claws raked through his silver hair in agitation. "She's kept this to herself for four years and I'm just finding out about it now? Am I that oblivious?"

"It's not like that, Inuyasha," Kagome protested as Kirara, Inu Taishou, and two strange female youkai touched down outside the open garden door to the study. "I could forget it a little when I was with you. I couldn't do anything for Akemi. You couldn't either, but at least you could help me forget a little while." The miko went to her hanyou and kissed his cheek.

Sesshoumaru ignored the reunion between all the lovers in the room. Their affectionate displays pained him occasionally, so he avoided watching them. Instead he studied the females that timidly followed the taijiya and miko into the room. Kirara seemed to guard them from the rear, preventing the Taishou from getting too close.

These females had been marked as whores, their hair cut short to signify their lacking honor, but he didn't believe it. Neither one moved as one desiring to entice a partner to touch and enjoy. They moved as if afraid to draw such attention. They were too timid, no youkai would visibly try to make themselves smaller, but these two did.

Sesshoumaru dismissed them from his attention the moment Inu no Taishou closed the door behind him; evidently signifying everyone that was there to come in was already inside. "Where is Akemi?" he demanded.

"Tell him Taishou," Sango ordered sternly.

Inu no Taishou visibly steeled himself before facing his heir. He'd known they were going to force him to deliver this message. Sesshoumaru had to be told. He had to be informed that Akemi, precious and delightful Akemi, was gone. "Akemi is gone."

"Gone where?" the western heir growled darkly.

"We don't know," Sango replied.

"Tell him the rest Taishou," Kagome ordered firmly, the slight growl in her voice surprising most of the males in the room.

"Akemi has broken her engagement," Taishou bit out the words, studying his son's face. This was his torment, his punishment, or rather, just the start of it.

Pain stabbed through Sesshoumaru's chest. "Why?" the word escaped his shocked lips. He and Akemi had an agreement. Even without hearing from her for almost ten years, he had trusted in their secret pact.

One of the strange females shifted restlessly. His golden eyes shifted to stare at her, her straight dark hair hung just to her chin. "We're wasting time on this," she muttered.

"Who are you?" his anger sharpened his words to stab at her. Sesshoumaru wanted the strangers gone. He wanted everyone gone so he could feel his pain without fear of shattering the image his instructors and father had carefully created for him and demanded he up keep.

"Me?" the female laughed and it was bleak and mirthless. "I'm just one of Akemi's fellow inmates in hell." She stared him in the eye, clearly showing the blood that stained them. "Look upon me and see what our school managed to do even with Akemi striving to make it easier to take."

Sesshoumaru's gut clenched painfully.

"Morenda," Kagome gasped.

"I used to be a person of honor and strength. I used to know I had a home and a future," Morenda continued. "Now I have nothing. My family would cast me off. Even if my betrothed would still have me I'd be too afraid to let him near me, let alone mate. The only thing standing between me and the final fall into being wholly Feral is trust in a miko that Akemi created for us." She glanced away. "Akemi shielded us, but no one protected Akemi," Morenda dragged her eyes back to his horrified stare. "I tell you this because we haven't time to tell the whole story. We need to get to Akemi before the bastard that hunts."

"Even this was too much time wasted," the other female whimpered. "We may not be able to save her from going Feral, but surely we can save her from him."

"Akemi wasn't completely Feral yet," Sango protested. The two females stared at her flatly; just how far gone Akemi was hardly mattered.

"I'm sorry Crissandra," Kagome shook her head, "but we absolutely had to stop here or we'd have no way of tracking Akemi."

"Besides," Sango shrugged, "we'll need the reinforcements if this guy really _is_ an Arctic Cobra."

"I'm telling you he is," Inu Taishou growled in exasperation.

"After the revelations we've had today, Taishou, you'll forgive me if I question anything you say," Sango snorted.

"Cough it up Inuyasha," Kagome demanded.

"You know I hate when you use her," Inuyasha grumbled reluctantly withdrawing the wooden doll from his pocket.

"For Akemi," Kagome drawled, "You'll get over it."

"No," Sesshoumaru growled but his father prevented him from interfering.

"Kikyou, awaken," Kagome called loudly enough to be heard over Inuyasha's grumbling and Sesshoumaru's struggles to prevent this. Miko energy flash flooded the room, cascading in brilliant colors over everything it touched, blinding the youkai and caressing the humans. When it finally began to recede there stood two miko in the ancient garb as mirror images of each other.

In a sudden burst of strength Inu no Taishou hadn't expected, Sesshoumaru shoved his father out of the way. "You will not be sending her after Akemi," he snarled at the current miko. Miko phantoms were used for one purpose only, and he would not have his female tracked down and exterminated like a rabid animal. She had to be alive; no matter if she was feral, she just had to be alive.

"We have no other way of tracking her," Kagome argued. "Akemi is hiding her scent and the Arctic Cobra is already on the hunt."

"Then we hunt the Cobra," Sesshoumaru growled even though he knew it was impossible to hunt him.

"And when he catches up to Akemi before you catch up to him?" demanded the cold voice of Kagome's previous incarnation. "You would suffer her to be trapped, to be caught by her routine rapist once again?"

"Routine?" Kagome gasped.

"Rapist?" came from three separate male voices in varying states of shock and rage.

"You didn't say anything about routine," Kagome glanced at Morenda.

Morenda rolled her eyes, "What do you think I meant when I said he liked her best? Every two weeks like clockwork he raped somebody. For almost two years it was Akemi exclusively."

"When it wasn't Akemi it was just somebody else," Crissandra shrugged. "I'm not sure which bothered her more."

"I thought you just – "

"Any girl past her fourth year knows, even if they do not believe it will happen to them," Morenda explained. "Many females escaped his touch completely because of his focus on Akemi."

"If we had known sooner," Kikyou began in her cold dark way. "Many more would have escaped him without sacrificing Akemi."

Sesshoumaru leveled a frigid glare on his father despite the churning in his stomach. He did not like what this implied.

"What's done is done," Kagome sighed. "Now we have to focus on what we can prevent."

"Surely you can do something other than set your miko phantom on her," Sesshoumaru drawled sarcastically.

"Relax, inu," Kikyou scoffed at him. "I'll not harm Akemi." His stare was incredulous. "Akemi is not the kind of Feral that needs exterminating. She is merely running to ground. She seeks safety from her past and present."

"She would have been safe here," Sesshoumaru growled.

Kikyou considered him in her cool, calculating way. "Akemi never received your letters."

"What?" Kagome gasped. "You mean he wrote?"

"Of course he wrote Akemi," Inu no Taishou scoffed. "It is customary for betrothed couples to correspond during separations. Akemi's the one who never wrote back."

"Akemi never received any letters but Kagome's," Morenda pondered. "None of us ever even saw letters from the outside unless Akemi shared the miko's letters with us."

"What?" Inu Taishou demanded.

"All letters went through the headmaster," Morenda breathed pensively. "Why didn't I realize this before?"

"You mean my siblings may have written me all this time and I never-" Crissandra gazed at Morenda in shock.

"We don't have time for that now," Kagome sighed and two females nodded. "Right now we have to get to Akemi before Krell does."

"It will not be easy," Kikyou sighed. "He uses the blood of Akemi's miscarriage to find her, the mixed youki of the single offspring he forced on her. His youki can find her out anywhere. It is an old magic only the Arctic Cobra still use."

"Are you saying it's impossible?" Kagome gulped.

"I didn't say that," Kikyou answered distractedly, her focus drawn inward. "Akemi goes that way." The miko phantom extended her pale finger unerringly southward. "She seeks distance from the place of her torment."

"She seeks the southern wilds," Morenda nodded as if it made sense to her.

"She'll never make it that far," Crissandra frowned.

"She doesn't have to," Morenda shrugged to her comrade in pain. "There are many smaller isolated branches of the wild before she gets that far. She could settle in anyone of them that provides sufficient sanctuary from strangers and non-ferals. It sounds like paradise," Morenda sighed with bone deep longing that ripped into Sesshoumaru chest.

Akemi sought refuge from everyone…

Including him.


	8. Breaking Free

I'd like to clear up a mild misconception.

Technically, Akemi is not wild. Wild youkai are a different breed altogether. She's just Feral. The main difference is that Wild youkai can be tamed (sort of) and are inherently curious. They're the ones who epitimize curiousity killed the cat (or dog or what have you).

Ferals are not curious. They are wary of everything. their experiences with pain leave them very closed to the idea of trying new things that might hurt, their past teaching them that might means will and pain is to be avoided.

Therein lies Sesshoumaru's greatest despair. Akemi cannot, to anyone's knowledge, be brought back to society and regular life. Once Feral, always Feral. Even if Akemi ever began to behave normally again, it's like being admitted into a psycho ward in real life. Once you are declared crazy (something that can't really be proven medically or definitively) how are you to prove you no longer are? If a Feral like a Akemi were to stumble back into Society, people would react to her like they would a rabid animal, Hunt her down and put her to sleep so to speak.

Nobody bothers to find out if it is possible for someone to come back from being Feral. Widespread fear and popular superstition prevent curiosity. There are not even legends about it.

The next two chapters are kind of twisted and seriously dark. This one is from Akemi's point of view and she's borderline crazy and succumbing to a rather violent form of despair. I guess this would be the place to put in my WARNING. I believe at this point, Akemi's mind would be repeating images of the things that actually drove her to this critical point, and as such it is actually in this chapter. I stress again WARNING: There is discussion of Rape in here. Three seperate cases, the pivotal ones. The first two have been discussed by observers. The last Akemi kept to herself. I tried to explore the reactions of a victim while incorporating her personal strength.

It does not make for a comfortable topic. It is probably why Rumiko Takahashi never attempted to explore this aspect of the era in which she placed her work. I mean there was the one or two attempts on Kagome during the latter half of the anime, but she never attempted to bring in an outside character who had already suffered it.

I cannot stress enough how DARK this chapter is, but it is you who must make the decision to read or not. whatever you decide I hope you enjoy.

ah, I've gone on terribly haven't I?

**Breaking Free**

In a little-used, unsteady shed left forlornly in the middle of what used to be a field of hay, Akemi drifted jerkily in and out of sleep. Every creak the old wood made, shifting in the wind, set her blood jumping through her veins and god forbid a small, hidden animal rustle through the dampened straw anywhere in the enclosure. She would be on full alert before the tiny thing had a chance to squeak properly at her.

She knew she was overly jumpy, but she couldn't seem to help it.

Yesterday, for it was already past midnight, Akemi had leapt from the train she had paid to ride less than a few hours down the track. She couldn't rationally explain why, for she had no solid reasoning behind her action. She simply had felt the urgent need to be free of the train and its passengers the minute warning bells had started going off in her head.

Free of the train, she had started to run.

Nearly any youkai could outrun a train the way she had, that wasn't why youkai took the train. Youkai traveled by train because running was illegal under the joint courtesy laws created to prevent the more lethal humans from going back to hunting their youkai fellows. The only youkai allowed to run were officials during emergency situations, which she wasn't. But then, Ferals never obeyed the law so it didn't much matter.

Akemi had quickly outstripped the train on its own tracks. Her goal was to avoid discovery and the tracks were laid down strategically across the country to avoid disturbing youkai communities by the noise of its passing. Only youkai would likely care about her running cross-country as Humans most likely wouldn't be able to see her if she moved fast enough. Thus the tracks provided her safest route between station towns.

She had to slow down around the towns and abandon the tracks to avoid drawing attention. As soon as she got around them though, she went right back to the tracks.

Akemi ran until nightfall, when the rain forced her to seek shelter in this leaky, old, creaking shack. She was finding that being Feral made her absolutely practical. She couldn't afford to become ill by sitting stationary in damp clothing. She wanted to evade pursuit and she was absolutely certain she was being pursued. In order to keep ahead of the hunt, she had to be physically well. So she stripped down and laid out her clothes before bedding down in the hay. And jumped at every sound she heard after that, her nudity making her feel vulnerable in ways unexplainable.

It struck her as odd how something so flimsy as clothing could make her feel less vulnerable when she knew it couldn't save her from anything but the cold. Still it did. Still she couldn't sleep restfully naked. With every close of her eyes she relived another night of torment and pain.

The first night he came to her was almost a fond dream. The horror and shame of it so much less than all that came after because she had been innocent. Her body had reacted innocently to stimulus while he subjugated her will at the root of it. Her physical body had merely reacted while he blocked the pain of reality from her. She'd almost thought it a dream. A dream of her future with the one youkai who would work to please her. Inu were always taken from behind the first time to prove instinctive ownership and dominance and she gentled under the hand she believed belonged to the only youkai she would have allowed such liberty.

It wasn't until he left her burning with the frigid chill of his seed in the light of day that she realized it wasn't a dream of her future mating, but a nightmare that would prevent it ever happening. She'd felt ill for weeks after ward, had borne the beatings and the ruthless shortening of her hair because none of it could touch on the fear she harbored inside.

She and Sesshoumaru were promised to each other, had been since she was six and she had betrayed him. Akemi hadn't heard from in five years at that point, she couldn't be certain if he would allow her to explain or not. She did not know if he would repudiate her out of hand, for there was more than just this for him to feel betrayed about.

Just before they had separated they had made promises to each other, made them in secret, made them in earnest. So many promises, but the one that mattered most to her was the one she'd been forced to break.

When they had been betrothed, gifts had been exchanged, as was custom. She had given him a box with a small cutting of her hair and her baby fangs, recently come out. It was to symbolize that she placed herself in his care, the fangs a symbol giving over defense of her self, her hair a symbol of care and trust. They had merely been gestures to a little girl incapable of understanding what they really meant. When she was old enough to understand she had regifted him with her hair at ten before being sent away. There had been tears in his eyes as he accepter her gift, he'd claimed to be so honored.

The gift he'd given her she had loved from the start, a little silver locket on a thin but sturdy chain. Supposedly it was a symbol of ownership, but neither of them had taken it that way.

Before their last parting he'd taken it from her and put something in it, blocking her so she couldn't see. Then Sesshoumaru had raised it over her head to put it on her. She'd known it was his instinctual desire to see her marked as his and she let it slide. She was inu too, so she could understand. He'd made her promise to keep it and she'd readily agreed. She would hold onto it with all her might, no matter what.

It wasn't until she was on the train bound away from him that she'd found out what he'd added to his gift. Inside the tiny locket that had lain barren for so long, was a piece of his hair. He had placed himself into her care as well. Oh she'd wanted to leap off the train and run back to him. He could do anything to her and she wouldn't have minded. But she had staid on the train.

Akemi forever cursed herself for not doing it. Within two years of her promise she was forced to break it.

Oh she'd fought tooth and nail to keep it. She'd had nothing else of him and they still hadn't taken her honor. The beatings she received for that bit of defiance had kept her from classes for a week.

Still she had the courage to face him, to brave him with her broken promise and her violated body because she'd had hope.

Akemi snarled at the word, hating it for everything it stood for. Of what use was hope when she'd miscarried on the wall.

The pain of that life giving up was horrific. She hadn't wanted it, hadn't even realized it was there, but she burned with sorrow for her young, even if it was the progeny of an evil encounter. She'd mourned that tiny soul's passing through that first night and the day that followed in which she was sentenced to a second night. She hadn't cared about being alone on the wall or her blood that ran down it. Only the life that stained her legs drew her attention, held her sadness. She couldn't help thinking if she'd also fail to properly carry Sesshoumaru's young if she was ever blessed with it.

Then her attention was drawn outward when suddenly there was a tongue lapping at the blood on her inner thigh. She'd wanted to fight him, she'd wanted to throw him away from her, but she was too weak, too tired and she was twisted to face the wrong way. She didn't want him to touch her pup even if it was dead, even if it wasn't quite developed into a recognizable pup yet. Akemi still wanted to protect it and so she struggled, though her struggles were weak. She struggled until he pulled back from his task his mouth too near a region she had no desire for him to trespass upon again.

"Relax inu bitch," his voice was too low for recognition but the pitch was just right to twist things warm and moist inside her. "I'll soon have you filled with more, but first we must clean this one out of the way." He abruptly thrust a finger inside her hitting a mark that set her to flowing over his hand. He thrust again and she yelped involuntarily as her body jerked away from the wall.

He chuckled darkly, his teeth grazing over her ass where she was startled to realize her skirt should have been. Vaguely she wondered what had happened to her undergarment as he added another finger and continued to thrust them against her until she came in a flush of her body's natural lubricant and the last of her child's blood.

He devoured all of it, dragging pleasure out of her body twice more to be certain of receiving it all before he stood. He'd thrust his invading fingers in front of her mouth and with a forceful roll of his hips stabbed her previously invaded flesh with a decidedly more painful intrusion. Her immediate gasp found his fingers in her mouth, painting her tongue with the taste of her deceased pup and the pleasure he'd wrung from her to get it.

She knew what he was doing that night, knew how he was playing with her instinct every time he proved to her how helplessly she was forced to allow him to take her from behind in the way of an inu dominating his bitch. But he wasn't inu. IT was the only defense she'd had against him even on that night.

He hadn't bothered to invade her mind while she hung on the wall. He didn't bother to block the pain from her. He'd wanted her to know that even as painful as holding his seed was (and it was excruciating) she still took pleasure in being filled by him.

He left his seed in her three times before dawn finally set her free of her torment.

She'd resolved to write Kagome the minute she had the chance. Then they broke her arm. Ten times in Thirteen days. On the fourteenth as she lay recovering in her bed he came to her again. He bent her over the edge of the mattress and forced her to present herself as she would to an inu mate. And in the morning they broke her arm again.

She'd still held hope until she'd finally been able to set pen to paper. Her efforts were worse than the first scrawlings she had attempted as a child. And they'd beaten her for that too.

Still she held on to her hope for Sesshoumaru as her body was abused daily, as her rapist sought her out almost bimonthly. Akemi held out hope even through the first extension of her school stay. And through the second as well. But the third…

Any dog will learn something if you kick it enough times. It may not learn what you want it to, but it will learn something and Akemi learned to bury the last of who she was as the rest of her broke with this last evidence of how misplaced her faith had been. She was unwanted. Perhaps her tormentors had followed through on the threat to inform her guardian of her whorish behavior, her worthlessness as a female. Perhaps they had been believed without even a chance to defend herself. It didn't matter anymore.

Akemi had finally relinquished her hope. It no longer mattered if Sesshoumaru would accept her, would forgive her because Akemi was beyond redemption, beyond the point of wanting him to. She could never present herself to him without the memory of the other who had forced her before him. She could never let him touch her without being tainted by the one who had touched her against her will until her will had all but broken enough to beg for it.

She was damaged beyond repair. There was only enough of the old Akemi left to wish all the people she cared about would remember her as she had been rather than how she now was.

All she wanted was freedom from it all. Freedom from the pain, from the memory, from the reality of how others would perceive her. She didn't know if she could make it to the wilds before she completely lost herself to being Feral. She hoped she did. The one hope she allowed herself because it was a hope for others instead of herself.

It was why she had leapt from the train. The pressure of keeping in company had become too much to handle. That and she could sense the hunter. Krell had begun the hunt. She knew the minute he'd heard of her escape. She had never been certain how she could always tell when her rapist joined the hunt when she'd made her attempts to escape. She'd just known. And her body had learned to react the minute she knew because whenever he found her, he would force her down into the appropriate submissive receiving position and forge his way inside her without a worry as to whether he damaged her or not.

It never kept her from running or slowed her down, so her body had learned to prepare for it, loosening her inner muscles, coating the interior flesh with her cream until she was moist and slick.

He'd laughed the first time he'd found her that way. Told her it was evidence of how much she'd wanted him to catch her. He'd even told her she ran just for him to catch her, that she must really enjoy how fiercely he took her at the end of the hunt, when he caught her.

She'd remained silent as his frozen fire had eaten at her inside and dribbled out between her thighs as he forced her to walk back towards the school bare of the clothing he'd ripped from her and kept in his hand. She'd run far enough that time that he'd taken her again before they'd made it back to the wall she'd broken free of the night before.

For a long time she didn't let her body's reactions get to her. Her body worked the way it was supposed to, it was only her abuser that made those reactions perverse. He kept trying to use her body's attempts to minimize the damage he caused against her, claiming the moisture was evidence of arousal, that the amount of it signified her anticipation of his abuse.

If a person flinched before being struck they were never accused of wanting it. Expecting it yes, but wanting it no. She'd held to that logic as long as she could, as long as her sanity could stand to cling to a thought that became increasingly less convincing and provided no comfort or release from the situation.

Akemi shook her head before shrugging into her still damp clothes. Her nerves couldn't stand the uneasiness much longer and the rain was letting up. She had to get a move on because there was no way Krell had held still for the rain. He was on the hunt for the female that conceived. An Arctic Cobra wouldn't simply give up if things seemed difficult.

He would hunt her down, take her repeatedly and punish her severely until she capitulated and presented herself to rut anytime, any place he so chose.

Akemi didn't want that. Even as Feral as she was she knew she didn't want her whole purpose in life to be nothing more than a breeder for her constant abuser. A Feral recognized pain, avoided pain, and in avoiding pain she would avoid those who caused it.

She didn't know how she would change the outcome of this hunt, but there was no way she was going to let Krell win. There was no way she would ever again allow him the honored position of her alpha, her dominant. She doubted if she would ever allow anybody that place but she knew that she would never give Krell that position as long as there was breath in her body.

Which was why she was heading for the wilds. She had, in her foggy almost Feral brain, devised half a plan in which several unknown Feral males had part. The last lingering rational corner of her mind realized that this would be exceedingly dangerous, and if it succeeded she would find herself firmly wedged under a feral male before the end of this, but if it would save her from Krell she would risk it.

Besides, Feral males could be notoriously violent. Perhaps she'd get lucky and fail to live through the experience, however things turned out. She didn't necessarily want to die, but given the alternative, death certainly seemed preferable to having to live through another rapist.


	9. Hunter

I would just like to take this oppurtunity to say... I GOT INTERNET!! Yay! Yay! 24-7 internet in my apartment! It has been too long! Ah...

okay I am better now.

This chapter is from Krell's point of view. He is...something else. I seem to really enjoy writing evil and exploring it. but he is...sick.

but I am proud of these chapters. anybody can write fluff and such. It takes real skill to write evil and make it seem reasonable. AFter all, evil doesn't think it's evil does it?

So a MAJOR WARNING for this chapter. Krell is EVIL, VIOLENT, and disgusting. And his language, even in thought might seem offensive. He does not mean it that way, which is not to say he is simply misunderstood, he really is all bad. It is simply a different way of thinking (evil thinking). Women, Females are simply nothing more than their ability to produce offspring and males are nothing more than moving meat, unless they are Arctic Cobra, then they are competition. That is all. And it isn't an unheard of way of thought. There are people in this world who think the same way. In our society we call them sociopaths.

Freaky.

I'm fairly certain some of Rumiko Takahasi's characters would fit into that category. Inuyasha did live in an era which was steeped in violence, selfishness and greed reigned supreme. This is the sort of environment to produce what we would call evil and psychotic. She just toned it down a bit for the TV/MAnga audience.

**Hunter**

Deep in the cover of a small, lonesome copse of trees, he paced in a lithe movement that seemed enticing and terrifying at the same moment. His every gesture was deliberate and precise, a hunter clearly relishing his hunt for prey.

The female rested ahead.

Krell's thin lips stretched into a dark, demented smile. He would draw out this hunt. The prey was unique after all, the ultimate prize, a female who conceived. This would be the last hunt for this particular female. And what a female she was.

When he'd first laid eyes on the inu bitch he'd known she was one for him. It was terribly easy to identify the females that came to the school with any kind of lasting spirit. That inu bitch had a dancing fire that flared out with resilience. She was a survivor.

He had known that when she was ten.

She hadn't proven him wrong. She'd fought against the headmaster's strictures until they made her bloody. Then she'd turned around and fought them again. The inu bitch was not to be ruled by pain. That hadn't stopped him from beating her just as soundly as the weakling headmaster demanded.

At twelve, she'd demonstrated even more spirit, fighting fiercely to hold onto her childhood treasures. Again they'd bloodied her for it. It was the first time she'd been left all night on the wall.

He hadn't cared to pay attention to her beyond these obvious proofs that she was for him. Prenubile babies held no appeal to him beyond the expectations of what they could become. They were merely piles of moving flesh to be beaten at the headmaster's order. The fact that they were female meant very little to him unless they were noteworthy. Only a precious few were even slightly noteworthy.

It wasn't in him to waste his seed on weaklings that couldn't possibly hold it, couldn't carry it for the goal was procreation after all. His prime directive was progeny. AS there were no females of his own kind, he had to look to other species for a worthy, likely womb to produce what he desired. Through experience the Arctic Cobras had learned not to bother with creatures of no power or spirit, but these were inadequate standards for finding a female capable of withstanding the physical strain of copulation.

He was no fool. He knew his inner body temperature, core of his being, was so cold as to burn these more fragile, warm-blooded youkai. The first attempt to procreate with any female from these lesser species could cause permanent damage to their tender inner flesh, if not death. He even knew of fellow Arctic Cobras that filed an unworthy enemy with their seed just to watch them writhe in pain. It was fitting sport of one who failed to supply even a mild challenge.

So he knew the tender females that broke at this school in their first years of attendance were not worth the attention. But the stronger ones, the ones who refused to break, who survived the beatings. Ah they were fit for sport. And sport he made of them.

Some he bedded once and never touched again. Since he'd come to the school, all had survived him, for he never touched the weak ones. But even some of the strong he could identify as being a waste after the first time. Their youki hadn't been able to heal any of the damage done to their womb so again it wouldn't be worth it to spend his seed on them again. Some put up little to no fight, giving him little faith as to their being able to survive to term even if he somehow forced them to conceive.

The little inu bitch had been one of those, offering little fight at all. She'd actually gentled under his touches. He'd been disappointed, but he filled her anyway, otherwise it was a wasted night.

He'd gone after the Kuroneko cunt next, though she was a bit younger than his usual prey. _She_ had fought him, actually managed to draw blood on him and he rewarded her for it. He was so pleased with her he over did it. He filled the little cunt, burned her with his seed twice before he'd reluctantly left the battered feline to her bed, the proof of his efforts trickling out to add its mark on the mattress.

He'd been so pleased with her he went to her again on his next night of leisure, and the one after that. He was slowly adapting her body to better accept his seed and slowly training her to learn when she was allowed to fight him and when not.

Krell probably would have continued to train her to heel on his command despite the slow nature of neko to learn such things if he had not discovered his sweet inu bitch had tricked him.

She had nearly gotten away from him, his female to conceive, simply by fooling him with that complacent act. But her body had betrayed her. Her body which knew it belonged to him and couldn't continue to carry his young without him to temper the bitch's womb adequately.

The two-week schedule was more than just convenience; it was required in the case of conception. The host womb generally was incapable of holding a developing Arctic Cobra. It was too warm, too soft. Cobra young will claw into the gentle lining of a womb, and if it isn't toughened properly, slice right through it causing an immediate miscarriage. The periodic cold burn of Arctic seed kept the womb lining from being too fragile.

He had been upset at the miscarriage for conception itself was usually so difficult but he'd rewarded the bitch anyway. He'd allowed her to taste their combined youki in the blood of their unfortunate son. He was pleased to find the source of his genetic continuity and had made sure to clean the bitch out properly with the pleasures of her own body.

She'd still needed to be punished, of course, for her previous deceit and he'd made sure to scrape her against the wall thoroughly and failed to block even the slightest of her pain. But his punishment had been mild; he'd made sure she found her pleasure after each dose of his seed. Pleasure, he'd been told could help lessen the pain and she was still such a young bitch, as yet untrained in the ways of her new master. And he was her master now.

No fool headmaster with his flimsy rules could keep him from his inu bitch now.

She was such a delightful challenge to train. She resisted her new reality for two whole years before she finally began to properly heed him. Oh, she still fought it, still liked to pretend the truth wasn't real, but she capitulated well enough he could go back to his regular schedule.

Just because he had found one female to conceive didn't mean he had to quit looking for another. Sort of an eggs in one basket sort of thing that the humans loved to say. So he went back to training his neko cunt who'd thought she'd escaped him and grown lax in her obedience. And he'd gone back to testing out new flesh for his seed.

For a time his little inu bitch had acted out. Disliking the lack of attention. Females were always so greedy for the attention of their master, their male, after all. Initially he'd thought the little bitch was revolting, attempting to escape him when she started to run. That was until her body caught up with her desires, then he'd understood.

She'd wanted to give him a hunt to enjoy. A hunt in which the prize was assured. She made it impossible for anyone else to find her, an obvious sign she wanted him to be the one to find her.

The day he realized that he'd even rewarded her with a second tumble before reaching the grounds.

It was the first time he'd deviated from his affixed schedule and he found himself taking the little bitch out of his routine trysts more often. His regular scheduled beddings were saved for breaking in lesser females than his inu. Instead, his appetite for his inu was better served by taking her at any moment she was left alone and vulnerable. He didn't go to her every time, there was some thing to be said for anticipation after all, and she might wrongfully come to believe she had power over him. Females were always so foolish as to believe such things after all, and while the belief didn't make it true, females were quite uppity when operating under such an idea. His inu bitch was already given to gross denial when it came to the truth of her reality. He would not be so unwise as to allow such troublesome ideas into her head.

Her mind was better filled with thoughts of how to properly please her master. His vigilance was slowly weeding out the last of her inappropriate and unneeded thinking when the fool headmaster had decided to dismiss his inu bitch from the school.

OH he hadn't worried his bitch would stay gone or even betray him with another male. She'd been too well trained by that time to even think about letting another male touch her.

She'd only proven him right by bolting.

But he'd grown weary of hunting this particular bitch. It was time to teach her there would be no more running without his order. And it was time for the death knell of her defiance.

When he caught up with her this time, she will have to offer herself to him on her own. There would be no more of him guiding her into the submissive position, she will have to assume it herself so that there will no longer be any room for denial. The inu bitch will acknowledge his ownership or her body will never again reach completion.

It would be no hardship for Krell. If his patience wears thin he could always fill her with pain and block the pleasure responses to relieve his frustration. He didn't foresee this final breaking taking long though. His inu bitch may be slow to learn the inevitable, but her previous lessons would be sure to point her in the right direction.

In the distance, he could feel her start to move.

He could sense her so well; he could almost see her. Of course he couldn't really tell anything about where she was, but he could feel that her clothes were wet and clinging to her appealingly. Usually the package of a viable womb mattered very little, but his familiarity with the bitch's form had instilled a fondness and pride for her attributes. She was constructed well for bearing young, and the fleshy softness would serve well in the care for any offspring she bore. Besides, sometimes it was good to have something to test one's teeth on.

HE wondered, as he began to stalk once more on the hunt, if she had left off her undergarment. It was the only lesson the inu bitch had learned quickly. After his second coming to her, she hardly ever failed to prepare for him by leaving them off.

Well, this once he would let her slide. They would be removed immediately upon arrival. He didn't much care where it happened, whether they were alone or with people. Arctic Cobras had no care for the opinions of others. Well, excepting to brag to other Arctic Cobra, a feat best achieved by commanding his inu bitch to physically submit to him in front of others, especially while already visibly breeding. There was no greater achievement and no possible way to top it. Perhaps to have more than one female breeding at once might top it, but only a fool would risk bringing both into company with another Cobra. If a female will breed for one Arctic Cobra, chances are she will breed for any Cobra and all bets are off.

An Arctic Cobra will not hesitate to steal a female from another Arctic Cobra. Allies are for the weaker species.

His bitch wasn't breeding yet, no need to show her off. Besides, before she fully capitulated, he risked her balking in front of others. He'd made too much progress to blow it all by rushing at the end.

There was something to be said for the thorough, slow, methodical approach when taming an inu.


	10. Simmer

One of these days, I'm actually going to finish that original piece I've started, but until then...

This chapter is a great deal lighter than the last two. Mainly because the insane or evil Characters are not really in it. Everybody else is though. And there is some major Taishou bashing going on. He deserves it.

Mostly this is an informational chapter. But oh so humorous in its way! Humor is like that so-called "spoon full of sugar" from that old Disney song. It makes it easier to take the information, as I just know you all hate straight fact-ish stuff presented to you. Hence the Taishou bashing that basically everybody gets to partake in. It's not like it's really hard though. The Inu has an ego the size of a continent-sized country. Some seriously deflation is desperately needed. heheh.

Rumiko Takahashi does it to most of her characters in her works. I mean, why do you think there are so many characters that insult each other and everyone else?

**Simmer**

"So what you're saying," Kagome began in utter disbelief, "is that you decided to send Akemi to obedience school just because of something Sesshoumaru said to end an argument you instigated then?" Her tone left little room for misinterpretation as to how stupid she now perceived the Inu no Taishou to be. But in case his stupidity impaired his comprehension more seriously than Kagome now estimated it might, she added, "That is the most incredibly moronic thing I've ever heard!"

"What idiot takes anything said during an argument as absolute gospel anyway?" Sango wondered. Both girls had been interrogating the Taishou since they left the house. Neither had cause to be winded as both were riding, Sango on Kirara with Miroku and Kagome one Inuyasha in his favorite fashion. With nothing else but Akemi to fill their minds and worry to twist their insides, they had mutually decided to figure out just what would possess the Taishou to pick a school so completely wrong for the female.

"Truly the Taishou must not have had good relationships in the past if he does not understand the rules of such simple arguments," Miroku muttered.

"Watch it monk," Inu no Taishou growled. He could indulge the females in their anger, for it was rightly placed, but any question into the quality of his matings and relationships from a male was unconscionable.

"No Dad," Inuyasha sided with Miroku, "he's right. Even Sesshoumaru and Akemi had their disagreements and argued about things. And they got along better than most youkai."

Taishou blinked at the thought of little Akemi arguing with his formidably frigid son. It was impossible. Surely if the two had argued the female would have lost a limb or gained battle scars.

"You do not understand your son at all," Kikyou scoffed as if in response to his thoughts. It was one of the reasons most youkai hated miko phantoms. They seemed to have the ability to see into a youkai's mind and judge the thoughts taking place there even before the youkai in question even knew the thought was there. Their intuition was apparently sharpened in death. "He would never have harmed Akemi."

"Of course Sesshoumaru wouldn't," Sango sniffed as if it were only monumental intellectual disability that could have even brought the idea to life. "I may not be the Western heir's best friend and confidante, but even I know he isn't moved to violence over foolishness. And he isn't particularly cruel to females, whatever the species."

"Akemi and her betrothed had an agreement," Morenda mused. "Understanding was theirs."

"It used to make me so jealous," Crissandra added. Both escaped "students" were breathing heavy with the exertion. "How she could hold onto her faith in him for years without hearing a word from him."

"I lost faith in my fourth year," Morenda panted.

"I lost mine in the second," Crissandra held her side but kept going. They both refused to stop, refused to rest.

"Did she ever lose her faith?" Miroku asked.

"Last year," Morenda replied quietly. "Each extension of her stay hit her hard, especially with the administration and staff routinely threatening to tell her family, all of you, what a whore she was. It was a favorite threat they threw at all of the fallen, shameless failures that proved themselves completely worthless as females."

"Which is pretty easy to do if you have more than half a brain and at least a thimble full of self-respect," Crissandra muttered. "Who wants a female who can think for herself?"

"Akemi broke that night," Morenda continued thoughtfully. "She stopped fighting them. It was months before I heard her speak again and she no longer sounded the same."

"I tried to encourage her, reminded her about the things she used to tell us about," Crissandra told them sadly. "She just closed her eyes and turned away, like it was painful to hear."

"It probably was at that point," Miroku nodded. "From her point of view, a failure to be called home would seem an indication that she was unwanted. The last immovable bastion of her self-worth crumbled under such evidence that the things that school had been pounding into her since she was a child were detestably true." The monk sighed pensively. "why did you extend her term at school? As I understand it, the typical stint in such a school is closer to six years, not nine."

"It is," Sango seconded. "Keeping a betrothed pair separated much longer than that can be dangerous. If a youkai pair has any romantic affection before the separation, the years apart coupled with hormonal surges can result in a wide range of violent reactions. The male can go berserk, killing everything in his path as he searches for the female. When he does find the female, the mating is violent and often fatal."

"You are too well informed," Inu Taishou grumbled as both his sons sent him threatening looks. Inuyasha didn't worry him. The hanyou was all bluster and hot air unless in defense of the miko he carried on his back.

His dog-eared son was obvious in his feelings, especially anger. There was nothing covert about Inuyasha.

Sesshoumaru on the other hand…

Sesshoumaru was an unreadable stoic even in his rage. He was a smoldering volcano, quiet and restful, seemingly asleep on the surface. But the pressure was building and when it broke free it could overflow slow and deadly. Or it could explosively punch through obliterating everything in its path. Or any mixture of the two extremes, his heir's anger was unpredictable by its hidden nature, and lethal by his training.

The Taishou had been certain his heir had the control and strength to last the extra years he'd kept Akemi away. He was afraid of what that house at the edge of his property meant for his ward, What his son intended to do with his house so far away from the rest of the family. The Taishou had intended the extensions to protect her and buy some time to figure out how to shield her once she did come home.

"It's too late for apologies," Kikyou declared as she glanced back to Inu no Taishou. "And it's too late for comfort," her eyes trailed back to Kagome. "She does not care for acceptance nor does she fear recrimination. The only thing left for her is escape, to hide."

"What are you talking about?" Inuyasha demanded. "All we have to do is take out this Arctic Cobra guy, then she has nothing to hide from."

"Killing the Cobra is insufficient to fix what ails Akemi," Sesshoumaru declared evenly. There was a threat in his words that breathed hotly down Taishou's neck.

"There's nothing to hide from without that scaly, twisted, soul-sucking son-of-a-one-legged Kangaroo," Inuyasha scoffed.

"Just her memory," Morenda pointed out. "You can't kill her memory and that's what she seeks to hide from."

"Son-of-a-one-legged Kangaroo? Inuyasha?" Miroku repeated under Morenda's words, seeking to lighten what couldn't be changed.

"Yeah," Kagome answered. "Can you think of anything more lame than a one-legged Kangaroo? It works, since we haven't a clue what the hell species Arctic Cobra really are."

"Whatever they are, their blood is definitely icy," Crissandra muttered.

"Insults have to be creative to be effective on youkai," Kagome explained to the monk. "And it's best to end with some lesser animal species the youkai most closely resembles. Such as dogs for inu and cats for all feline species of youkai." She assumed an instructor's tone, "For example, I compared the Inu no Taishou to a hairless Chihuahua-"

"You did?" Inuyasha glanced proudly at his betrothed over his shoulder.

"Well, I would have if he hadn't cut me off before I finished," Kagome pouted. "I also inferred that one of his parents was a shaved cocker spaniel. No offense Sesshoumaru, Inuyasha, I was just pissed off."

"None taken. I love the bit about the dog being shaved," Inuyasha grinned. "I'll have you properly insulting all species in no time."

Morenda suddenly glanced at Crissandra sharply, then the two females poured on a burst of speed that surprised everyone. The girls had been panting and flagging for well over half an hour. It was difficult to believe they would both go into a sprint just then. Unless there was something urgent ahead.

Less than twenty meters ahead of the Taishous and Miko-guided party Crissandra slipped her skin and shifted into her stripes. It was unnerving the way she did it without a sound. Typically, youkai roared with the release of their inner beast, Crissandra's tora slipped onto padded feet to run over the ground between here and there. Two minute later Morenda's larger Kuroneko stalked along side her.

"Speed up you fools," Kikyou ordered. "Akemi can't hold him off for long and those two won't be much more than a distraction."

"They're youkai," Inuyasha protested.

"And completely untrained in self-defense," Kikyou snorted. "All they know is how to take a hit without crying out."

"What are they sensing that we aren't?" Miroku asked, befuddled that absolutely no one else in their group had sensed a thing. Somebody should have detected something.

"The females are almost Feral," Sesshoumaru answered with a growl. "Their instincts have been fine tuned to detect that which threatens them. The Arctic Cobra has been their most constant threat."

"So they developed a sort of sixth sense about him," Kagome added.

"When youkai go Feral they begin to act almost as animals," Sango sighed. "No one is quite certain how much higher thinking goes on, but instinct generally rises to fill in the gaps. It's all survival with them. They attack when threatened. There's no evidence of any real societal interactions beyond mating and guarding territory. It varies for each species and individual," she added dully. "Of course, nobody has made a real study of it. Generally, Ferals hide in natural, wild areas, unless food becomes scarce. Then the braver ones will start raiding settled properties and I get a Phone call." Her brow furrowed in thought. "They always identify us as a threat immediately. I'm not sure how they know, because we don't always go in brandishing weapons and shouting bloody murder."

"Maybe you can ask Morenda later," Kagome shrugged.

"A little focus please," the miko phantom demanded. "We are nearly upon them."

And with those words, they stumbled onto the scene.


	11. Clash!

And now, it's the chapter you've all been waiting for!

OR rather, it's the big ol' fight. Yes, yes, it does happen in this chapter. Everybody finally catches up with Akemi. Sesshoumaru finally lays eyes on her and sees for himself just what happened to her.

at this moment I would like comment on the amount of humor I felt when one of my reviewers complained about the cliff hangar. Heehee! I just have to chuckle because it's nowhere near as bad as the cliffie I left in _Flights of Fancy _near the end. Now THAT was a cliff hangar to riot about. And I knew it when I wrote it. This last one, not so much...in my oppinion anyway. Now if I was sporadic in my updating, or only updated on a monthly basis and suffered that kind of chapter end, THEN I would be terribly pissed. But holding off on the fight like that seems to be pretty standard for me.

I did it in _Chronicles_ and _Flights of Fancy_ and to some extent, I even did it in _Insecurities_. Not sure why though. Maybe I'm just evil. Or maybe I do it to get a reaction out of people. You have to admit there are a lot of silent readers out there, too lazy to hit the review button. But that's okay. I had a lot of fun commenting on that in my AN in _Chronicles_. I actually had a lot of fun with the ANs during that fic. If you haven't read them, you're missing out.

And now for the warnings Rumiko Takahashi never actually had use for. There is violent death in this chapter. More of that commonly offensive language as Krell is in this Chapter (he can't think without them I guess).

oh and the next chapter...will make you very upset with me. Just letting you know.

**Clash!**

Their introduction to the altercation was sudden. The trees seemed to draw aside like a great curtain to permit them view of what had previously been screened from their eyes. In a way, the fight was brought to them as Morenda's body was thrown back through the trees to knock the Taishou off his feet.

"Shit!" Inuyasha leapt up and back to avoid a falling tree that nearly squashed him and his precious cargo.

Inu Taishou rolled to his hands and knees with a defensive growl the neko paid no heed. Morenda visibly shook her head and bounded back the way she had come with a soft roar. Even in this form her voice was afraid to use the greater volume she was capable of.

Kirara landed beside the last of the timber to settle with a growl of her own. Carefully, she dislodged her passengers and took off after the greater youkai to lend aid.

"Kirara!" Sango called after the fire cat, confused by this odd behavior. Kirara had never thrown her before for any reason. Rubbing her behind, Sango was definitely hoping she could figure out what caused it this time so it would never happen again. She would positively love to limit the number of bruises she collected.

The same really couldn't be said for Miroku whose hand inevitably reached out to rub her sore bottom too. "Are you all right, Sango?"

"Miroku!" Sango smacked him solidly upside the head. "Now is not the time!"

"Indeed," Kikyou observed them with disapproval. "The battle lies over there and it would not be wise to damage ourselves before we engage him." The miko phantom pointed to the altercation ahead of them.

They could only watch as Crissandra sank her fierce teeth into the creature that so frightened the students of the northern school.

"Stupid female," Inu Taishou muttered softly. It was obvious spilling the Arctic Cobra's blood in such a way was exceedingly painful, but Crissandra refused to let go. She lashed out with her claws in pain but refused to loose her jaw.

Morenda attacked Krell from the other side, rearing up to attack with her extended front claws.

For all that they had no real combat training, the two were ferocious and determined. Against any other enemy it might have made a difference, but the Arctic Cobra were trained from childhood for combat. Their youngest warriors practiced with Ferals as a form of play.

In quick motions, Krell sent Morenda flying backward again, and he threw the tora after her a moment later. "Such playful females you are," his voice laughed at their attempts. "The time for games will soon be at an end. Stay out of the way, little Neko cunt, your turn will come soon after." His voice was stern over the last words as Morenda attempted to rise and attack once more. Her body failed her. Crissandra failed to move at all, her tora form beginning to reduce to the weaker, smaller, humanoid form she wore everyday.

"Now, little bitch," Krell rumbled mildly to the figure standing just beyond the unconscious Crissandra and wounded Morenda. "You have my undivided attention."

"Akemi," Sesshoumaru breathed almost silently. Her clothes were torn excessively, exposing a sizable wound in her side dripping liquid rubies over her hip. Her eyes were crimson, so dark her pupils appeared blue. And her once silver hair was chopped mercilessly short at the chin, showing a horrific pink to signify how often it had been stained with blood. Her original color would most likely never be recovered. It was gone just like the length of it. Even if he could save her from going Feral, a ridiculous impossibility, he could never undo what was done and the reminders would never go away.

Which was something to think about later. Right now Akemi was snarling fiercely at the Arctic Cobra. She was already wounded; indicating she and her tormentor had already exchanged blows. It was clear the youkai females, all three of them, were malnourished, failing to heal as quickly as they should, and the Cobra was perfectly healthy, already closing the wounds inflicted by the two felines. Currently Kirara was striving to plant her fiery feet up his ass, but the Cobra was chilling her fire before it could do much damage.

Akemi couldn't possibly win this. The few defense lessons Sesshoumaru had managed to sneak under the Taishou's nose wouldn't do her much good at all. He knew she would try something desperate anyway, the fact that she wore blood now indicated to him that she wasn't completely broken.

"You're misbehaving abominably, inu bitch," the Cobra drawled, completely bored by her defiance and the little interferences by the fire cat. "If you don't correct yourself, I may just take the others first."

Akemi's snarl transformed into a ferocious growl as she slipped to stand over the younger females in her true inu form. There was no sign in this form as to how badly fed she was, for the inu stood greater in size than was typical of a female her age. She was probably stronger too, but without knowledge of how to use that strength it wouldn't matter.

"How on Earth did she manage to get so big?" Kagome gasped at the many-stained dog-like form of the friend she used to practice on. "She was hardly bigger than Kirara before she left."

"Two things, Kagome," Sango answered. "Her age of maturity, or puberty, contributed to it, but this is – I think – due more to youkai adaptability. Her inner inu grew to a form it felt would be better able to survive her environment. It caused an extreme growth in strength and size."

"Then why didn't-"

"They did Kagome," Kikyou interrupted the discussion. "Morenda's claws are so long they cannot be fully retracted. They are sharper and more durable than a typical kuroneko. She has also developed muscles specifically to increase speed. The tora is still young yet, but her speed is also greater than others her age. You've already noted their senses have grown sharper as well. Felines are generally like that, changing subtle things for greater effect. But then, felines in the wild are generally solitary hunters. They rely on stealth and cunning to get what they need."

"Canines usually exist in packs," Sango nodded. "Strength and power is needed to protect and hunt. So Akemi developed into a massive size providing increased strength."

"And power," Kikyou added as the pinked inu slapped the Arctic Cobra away with a massive paw.

Krell crashed through a number of trees before coming to a painful stop on a jagged rock. The rock sliced open his side opposite the burns that covered half his upper body where Akemi had smacked him. The inu had not followed him to check his state of being. She did not whine in apology for damaging him unintentionally, which meant she'd fully intended to hurt him.

Akemi stood over the felines defensively, growling at him as if she were protecting them from Krell. This was not to be borne. The Arctic Cobra rose to his feet with an angry growl. Protectiveness in a female was admirable so long as she was protecting her young from kidnapping and death. It was not acceptable for a female to coddle those young in foolish attempts to protect them from their sire. And it was downright uppity of the bitch to think she could protect other females that belonged to the same male.

"I am beginning to grow angry," Krell's voice started low and threatening before growing to shake the very ground at their feet with his volume. He seemed to collect himself a moment, as though his blistered skin and bleeding wound were hardly worth noting, before speaking again. "I'm afraid you will have to present yourself to me as a proper inu bitch before I shall be able to forgive this little tantrum of yours, uppity bitch."

The giant inu bitch stiffened in some paralyzing emotion, but few of those present noticed. Instead, Sesshoumaru's sudden attack with sword drawn drew all their notice. It was rare for the stoic male to bother drawing his weapon. Even rarer for him to attack in such a brash manner. That was more typical of Inuyasha. But Sesshoumaru couldn't help it. The Arctic Cobra had spoken words too offensive to be excused.

Akemi would only ever present herself willingly to him, Sesshoumaru. It was inexcusable for another male to demand what was not his to ask for. What made it even more aggravating was the thought that the Arctic Cobra had forced Akemi into that position more than once before.

"Do not interfere fool," the Arctic Cobra growled at him, wholly disregarding Sesshoumaru's attack as he had Kirara's. "The female is mine and she knows it. You have no place between me and my bitch. Even your feminine look will not cause me to be lenient should you get in the way."

Sesshoumaru nearly snarled, nowhere near clear headed enough to offer proper retort.

Krell sent him back several feet, a sharp move to the side he didn't even have to turn to pull off. These interferences were barely more than tedious and if this went on much longer he would have kill them all, slowly and painfully.

Before Krell could ponder further on his plans for torture, before Sesshoumaru could attack the Cobra a second time, before Inu no Taishou found an opening on the Arctic Cobra he liked and before the humans managed to get close enough for any one of their implausible plans to eliminate their foe, the giant pink inu beat them to it.

Akemi pounce on the Arctic Cobra with all four paws, her claws digging in and dripping corrosive fluid. An instant after she was assured of a solid grip on her waking nightmare, she definitively protected the females that had suffered the same fate. With a powerful roar, she dripped her toxins onto the trapped youkai before deftly dragging all four paws away from each other pulling a piece of the Cobra with each one.

In a quick second, her tormenter, her rapist was drawn and quartered in an efficiency that robbed her of a thorough but unwanted vengeance. The pieces were flung in four directions to land where they might far away from each other and her.

The threat was eliminated. Krell could never hurt anyone ever again. Not Akemi, not Crissandra, not Morenda, or any of the girls at a far distant school of pain.

He was gone.

Hurray for that.


	12. Feral

Welcome again to a new chapter of _Feral,_ much has happened in a short amount of time.

hmm, what to put here...

Oh the sequel, which I have started, is coming along VERY slowly. Mainly because I have no where to write in my apartment, and I feel funny writing on the clock at work if I'm not doing something else at the same time. _Wild_ is a bit more vague in my head than this story was. I knew what was going to happen, and where it was going to end. Everything in between was directly in relation to those two points. This fic isn't particularly convoluted. there's no stopping at point 'G', 'Q' and 'W' in between stopping at 'A' and 'B'. _Wild_ simply can't be the same.

For starters, one of the main characters can only talk some of the time. Or rather, she can talk, just not in a language recognizable to everyone else. And time will be spent in two different locations. It's getting that self same character from one to the other without her throwing a violent fit. But I'll work it all out eventually. I always do.

Not that I'm going to leaving you hanging at the end of this fic...which is at the end of this chapter. Wa-pow! You didn't see that coming did you? heheh.

Ah, Kikyou has her shining moment in this chapter. I don't particularly despise the undead miko. I think what colors the views most people have of her in the anime is her behavior towards Inuyasha and youkai in general. But you have to remember, she was a priestess in a time when Youkai were the feared (almost) enemy of mankind. She was expected to fight them and efficiently kill them. That was the belief system. It would probably be the same for any historical figure during war time. Any country that ever conquered another, took over another and later was forced to relinquish control of it. It's very similar. Try taking anybody from pre-world war Britain through modern India, Hong Kong, and China. I'll bet you a lot of people won't be able to stand them for long. It's just the way of things.

Enough of that.

I'm Sure Rumiko Takahashi understood it, Kikyou is her character after all.

Oh, and you're going to feel really sorry for Sesshoumaru at the end of this!

**Feral**

The stained inu sniffed at the ground thoroughly as if assuring herself the male was gone. When she had satisfied her purpose she dismissed the bloody earth with a sneeze and turned away to kick dirt over the spot on her way back to the neko and tora females.

Akemi nosed at them carefully. Morenda swatted at the big pink muzzle half-heartedly and the inu bowled her over in response. She began to whine softly when Crissandra failed to react at all.

"Kagome," Kikyou called softly. "Go see what you can do for Akemi's pack sisters."

"What?" Inuyasha protested even as Kagome managed to escape his protection. "Inu and felines can't be pack."

"Fool, Hanyou," Kikyou shook her head at him.

"They are Akemi's pack," the Taishou confirmed. "They have shared blood and history, and they trust no other as they do each other."

"Birthed by abuse and baptized in abandonment," Kikyou continued. "Their pack is over a hundred strong and doomed to disintegrate bit by bit. The oldest will never lose the bonds of this pack no matter how much healing is done, no matter where their futures take them, but a pack cannot survive with only abused females. It cannot perpetuate itself with no male to help carry the line."

Akemi took a step back, then a second before consciously resuming her lesser form. Immediately she swayed with the weakness of blood loss and power surge brought on by the change, but she kept her feet. Silently, she watched the miko approaching the tora. She shook her head as names for each failed to surface, but disregarded worry over such an insignificant detail. She knew the miko could be trusted and the tora was to be protected. The two together were safe and it was time she removed from the scene. The smell of frozen blood had her on edge and the area of fallen timber was too crowded and exposed.

Her vision went kind of white pausing her escape momentarily. Losing much more blood would be hazardous and carrying the smell of it would bring more trouble. The bleeding had to be stopped and cleaned from her person, in that order. She raised her right claw and cracked the knuckles purposely to start the flow of the acidic chemical under the skin. It would be painful to cauterize the wound in such a way, but it was better than being dead.

She lifted the torn edge of cloth away from the hole in her middle and slowly lowered her dripping claw towards the wound. With a deep fortifying breath she spread her fingers wide enough to cover the most area in one go. Akemi clenched her teeth and braced herself for the pain.

But the pain didn't come and all her preparatory efforts resolved into a fairly violent growl. Some fool had clamped a vice grip on her arm, preventing her from finishing the downward movement. How dare someone touch her! How dare anyone trap her, and prevent her from doing what was necessary!

Sesshoumaru growled back at her soothingly but there was no recognition in Akemi's eyes. She didn't know him. It stabbed at a vulnerable place in his chest but he still refused to let go. If it was true that Akemi would forget everything as was widely rumored then he didn't want her to mark herself with a reminder of the hell spawn male that had driven her Feral in the first place. If she cauterized the wound, it would scar instead of healing smooth in time. She would see it and remember pain, remember torment and shame. He'd rather, if she remembered anything, that she remember the good things rather than the bad. So he would prevent this reminder of her past from ever being created.

Sesshoumaru held on as she began to tug violently on her arm. He would allow her to bleed him if it came down to it. He would not allow her action.

The Feral tensed and turned her snarl on the new touch to her back and shoulder. She didn't like to be hedged in and trapped. Slowly her growls quieted upon perceiving the miko phantom behind her. The tension flowed from most of her body.

"Let go, Sesshoumaru," Kikyou demanded blandly. Sesshoumaru stared at her, bewildered by Akemi's reaction. Surely a Feral would recognize the threat a miko phantom posed. Their purpose was Feral extermination after all.

"Why does she calm for you?" he couldn't help but ask. Akemi had no way of knowing Kikyou; Kagome hadn't been able to summon her previous incarnation until her fifteenth year.

"Because she realizes there is no defeating death," Kikyou answered, her dark eyes conveying a profound sadness over the words. "It is common among youkai driven Feral through abuse and hardship. They don't particularly want to die, but know there is no escaping it. She also recognizes my energy from its similarity to Kagome's." The miko phantom sighed wearily, "Now please release her arm. You're making her nervous and I need her to relax."

"Calm for what?" the male asked suspiciously. Sesshoumaru didn't want any more damage done to the female that had been meant for him.

"You didn't want her scarring herself. Her instinct demands the blood be stopped and cleansed from her person," Kikyou answered. "I shall fulfill both her need and your wish, but I need you to let go."

Reluctantly, he removed his hand from Akemi's arm. His eyes glued warily to the phantom. Kikyou of old had been untrustworthy around youkai. In her former life she had actually killed Inuyasha's previous incarnation. And they had been allies. It was rumored the Kikyou in the history books had even loved him, but she still did him in. Nothing quite like purifying your lover out of living existence to show how much you care. She was still that person. The memories were there.

It was the reason Inuyasha shied away from her in subtle ways. It was why he often hid Kagome's summoning doll.

In any other circumstances, Sesshoumaru wouldn't have cared enough to feel such distrust of the miko phantom cradling Akemi. In any other situation, that wouldn't be Akemi at risk.

Kikyou ignored him, noting his distrust and dismissing it. It was her lot. If not for the new practice of calling on past incarnations already soiled with the bloody combative power channels, she would never have learned how wrong the way she lived her life actually was. She could have loved. She could have known peace. Instead she lived her life in the way expected of a miko of her time. Violently. Secure in the holiness of her powers and their "right" way of being. Purity is the power of the gods.

It was all rubbish now. And now she knew her real place in history.

And so Kagome could keep her peaceful strengths of healing and judgment as pure and true as possible, all the other duties, such as Feral extermination were shuffled over to the previous incarnation that was so good at it in life. But Kikyou would show them all she wasn't completely incapable of change. And she wasn't completely bereft of some of those gifts Kagome was famous for.

Gently, as gently as she could, Kikyou pushed her power out to flow over Akemi's skin to the wound that was such a problem at the moment. Perhaps her efforts weren't as soft as a mother's caress, but she didn't get much practice. Slowly the skin of the youkai she clutched to her chest began to knit back together. It probably took longer than Kagome could have done, but then she wasn't Kagome anymore than Kagome was Kikyou. They were different, time and experience made them so.

Once the wound was fully healed over, Kikyou let go as well.

The Feral youkai turned to stare at the miko phantom curiously. By rights, death didn't hand out healing and extended life. It was strange. Her gaze did not linger on Kikyou for long despite how unusual she obviously found the phantom's actions to be. Briefly, the inu female glanced back to the tora and miko to reassure herself both were fine before she quickly disappeared into the forest.

"Akemi," her name burst from Sesshoumaru's lips as if ripped from the core of his being. Kikyou stalled his move to chase after her.

"Akemi is gone," the miko phantom informed him softly. "That name holds no meaning for her any longer. She is Feral and beyond your reach."

"I refuse to believe that," Sesshoumaru growled in response, his tone edging into panic. He couldn't believe it, wouldn't. The only thing in his life he'd ever been allowed to want for himself was Akemi. If she were irreversibly taken away he would break just as surely as she had. He had promised to wait for her to make the decision of when they would be together as mates. He would keep his word. Sesshoumaru shook off the miko phantom and stared into the trees his female had disappeared behind. In a low voice, hardly meant to be heard by anyone, he reaffirmed his promise. "I will wait for you."

"Dad," Inuyasha called to his father. "Who owns this section of the wilds?"

"I don't know-"

"Buy it," Inuyasha ordered.

"Watch your tone-" the Taishou began with a stern note in his voice, but his hanyou son cut him off a second time.

"Buy it," Inuyasha repeated imperiously. "The female you swore to protect and failed, finds safety in these woods. The least you can do is ensure that she'll never be bumped out of them by some idiot looking to develop the area into a resort or something." The hanyou growled, "You owe her that much."

"It's the least you can do for the son you finally broke," Kagome added.

"There's nothing wrong with Inuyasha," Inu no Taishou scoffed.

"You have more than one son," Miroku point out, tilting head toward the inu youkai still stolidly staring after Akemi.

"Then she should have called him my heir," Taishou declared disdainfully.

"You no longer have an heir," Sango snorted. "You think Sesshoumaru will continue in your footsteps after what you let happen to the only person you let him publicly care about? And don't for a minute think Inuyasha will take up the reins."

"The council of lords would never stand for it," Kagome glared at the Taishou. "Too much power in the one connection, remember. They almost didn't allow our engagement with him being the second son."

"They'd make him break the betrothal before allowing him to be heir," Kikyou added with a nod.

"And that ain't happening," Inuyasha growled. "You've cost one of us a female. I'll not let you take away mine."

"But I need an heir," the Taishou stuttered.

"I'm sure you can find someone willing to fill the position," Kagome shrugged unwilling to concern herself with the matter any further.

Morenda slowly approached the inu that had joined in the fight against the Arctic Cobra. It went against her every instinct and learned reflex to approach a male, but he only wanted Akemi, and Akemi's male had been something of a shining icon in the days the neko first knew the now Feral inu. Akemi had spun tales of him rich in gentle warmth and moonbeam wishes that Morenda felt she could almost trust him, if ever she could trust a male.

"Do not fear me," Sesshoumaru's voice floated to her quietly. "I have yet to raise my hand to a female that didn't attack me first. And even then, she was only slightly bruised."

"Akemi used to talk of you," Morenda crept as far as she could make herself go and sat beside him. Akemi wouldn't want him to despair or mourn for her.

"Don't," Sesshoumaru cut her off. "It hurts too much to hear."

Morenda studied him silently. "You turned out the way she thought you would. She used to write you in the beginning. They forced us to write letters home, though they appear to never have been sent," the Kuroneko sighed sadly. "All of hers were to you. Most would switch out whom they wrote to during that class, but Akemi always wrote to you. She didn't stop until after…" she trailed off refusing to retell it to the male sitting before her. She shifted uncomfortably before directing her gaze to the empty trees. "Do you intend to wait for her here?"

He turned his golden gaze to glance at her before turning back to the trees.

"He ruined us, you know," Morenda continued. "Some more so than others. Most of us give up on ever being with our waiting male that never write after the first time he…touched us. Akemi held on for-"

"Stop," the inu looked pained. "Your words hold no comfort."

"I'm sorry" Morenda bowed her head in sorrow. "We have not had much to take comfort in. It only makes sense I would not know how to give it." The kuroneko rose to her feet and turned away from the inu who would wait for his female as long as it took. "Perhaps someday when she has finally managed to forget us and you and that school in the north with the tortures we went through, perhaps she'll let you touch her. Maybe to ease the ache of her season, she will let you came near her to hold her and fill her." She turned briefly back to him. "I hope for that day for you, but also for her."

Sesshoumaru stared after her a moment before returning his eyes to gaze steadily into the trees. It was his sole task now, to wait. There were no other distractions anymore, no house to build, no duties to perform. There was only the endless wait for a female that no longer remembered him.

Still he would wait for her to return to him. There was nothing else. He did not look ahead to the times when his waiting was through. He did not imagine what would be said or done if Akemi ever came back. He simply…

…waited.


End file.
